The Gun Hawk

Sheriff Rod Cameron once offered Rory Calhoun a deputy's badge out of friendship, but Calhoun didn't want it. Now briefly in Cameron's town, he makes friends with hotblooded Rod Lauren and kills two men who kill his father, barfly John Litel. Now Cameron is after him for the murders, as Calhoun and Lauren make their way to a sanctuary town near the Mexican border.

It's the last movie directed by Edward Ludwig -- he would helm one TV episode three years later, then retire -- and there are a lot of troubles with it. Cameron moves and speaks as if his corset is hurting him, Jimmy Haskell's score makes this seem more like a long TV episode than an actual movie, and the script is busy and muddled. Ludwig directs as if the Production Code is still in effect. Saddest of all, it's John Litel playing Calhoun's drunkard father for a brief, inglorious moment on the screen.

On the plus side, cameraman Paul Vogel does some nice work shooting the Bronson Caves, but it's a movie that thinks it's saying something important but mumbles as it does so. With Ruta Lee and Morgan Woodward.