Set in 1875 at the location called Comanche Creek , Colorado, it begins with prisoner Jack Mason who is broken out of prison by a band of strangers . They use him in a robbery , then when the dead-or-alive reward is high enough , they shoot him and collect the elevated reward. The National Detective Agency, now knowing the gang's methods , killing delinquents for the bounty , arranges to have the intrepid agent Bob Gifford (Audie Murphy) jailed in Comanche Creek for train robbery. The gang led by Amos Troop (De Forest Kelley) takes the bait but then things go wrong when to be aware there's a traitor in the band . A Gunslinging Detective Smashes The Most Ruthless Outlaw Gang Of All Time ! Masked marauders... rampaging raiders blasting a trail of terror and violence across the West... and the man who pledged to stop them rode at their side! Gunslinging Man-Hunter...She Was All Woman to a Man's Man
This thrilling Western has a peculiar , sui-generis plot : a murderous outlaw gang who helps escape inmmates from prison , uses them to help in crimes , when the reward goes high enough then killing them to collect money and to solve this criminal set-up , the tough detective Murphy infliltrates the gang of bandits forcing wanted men to participate in robberies . Uneven , but at times quite nice Western in which Audie gets two heroines for the price of one and here he faces off a whole gang of cutthroats . As Audie Murphy gives a nice acting in his usual style as a ruthless detective out to smash the West's most notorious outlaws . While the two girls are the lovely saloon-keeper Colleen Miller as Murphy's sweetheart with whom he catches the eye , she like Eddie was a refugee from Universal-International and Susan Seaforth , both make the performing sparks fly . And in this grim-face Western there's a great support cast with plenty of familar faces , such as : Ben Cooper , Jan Merlin , Mort Mills , Eddie Killan , John Hubbard , John Milford , William A Wellman Jr and , of course, De Forest Kelley is the best of the baddies .
It displays a spectacular and brilliant cinematography in Panavision by cameraman Joseph F. Biroc. As well as rousing and moving musical score by composer Marlin Skiles. The motion picture was professionally directed in B-style by Frank MacDonald , though it has some failures , flaws and gaps. Frank was a prolific craftsman whose career spands over forty years . At first hired as a dialogue director, McDonald turned out some scripts and in the mid-'30s began directing . Working for almost every studio in Hollywood at one time or another, he did a lot of work for Republic, grinding out Gene Autry and Roy Rogers westerns, and at the Pine/Thomas "B" unit at Paramount , churning out westerns, action dramas and war pictures. Not entirely comfortable as a director , he nevertheless turned out more than 100 pictures in his career . As he made a lot of fims with penchant for Western genre , such as : ¨Sioux City Sue, Under Nevada Skies, My Pal Trigger, Rainbow Over Texas , Song of Arizona , Sunset in El Dorado , Along the Navajo Trail , Tell It to a Star , Man from Oklahoma , The Chicago Kid , Scared Stiff , Las campanas de Rosarita, Lights of Old Santa Fe , One Body Too Many , Sing, Neighbor, Sing , Take It Big , Gambler's Choice , Timber Quee , My Darling Clementine¨, among others. Rating : 5.5/10 . Acceptable and passable Murphy western.
