Last Train From Gun Hill

Last Train from Gun Hill is a routine revenge Western from which the biggest pleasure to be had is in ticking off the steady stream of clichés. A Hal B. Wallis production for Paramount it was director Sturges's follow-up to his successful 1957 film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which Kirk Douglas also starred and which used much of the same crew.

Douglas plays U.S. Marshall Matt Morgan whose Indian wife (Ziva Rodann) is raped and killed by the son, Rick (Earl Holliman who had also been in Gunfight) of his old friend, Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), now a cattle baron. In the way of such things Belden is now the autocratic boss of the town of Gun Hill. Morgan arrives in Gun Hill to bring Rick to justice but, of course, Belden isn’t going to allow that.

From Holliman’s spineless scion to the tart with a heart (Carolyn Jones), Dimitri Tiomkin’s score to the Technicolor/VistaVision treatment of the Arizonian landscape, and a steady supply of witless henchmen being picked off by dead-eyed Morgan there are few surprises to be had here although opening the film with a rape scene, albeit discreetly realized, was a bold move for its time. There are also a couple of nice touches in the film’s final section, particularly the way that Morgan gets Rick to the station in order to get that titular train.

Douglas is, needless to say, effective but somewhat surprisingly, Quinn seems too hail-fellow-well-met to  convince.The film was a minor success in its day and still has its admirers but the traditional style of Western that it represents was all but over.

FYI: Jones was soon to find small screen fame as Morticia in The Munsters.

 

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