James Craig rides into Purgatory when they're taking up a collection for a town tamer. He takes the pot, then has troubling doing the job. The problem seems to be wheelchair-bound Paul Richards, who runs one of the saloons and spends most of his time playing the piano and reading poetry. Craig can't bring himself to shoot an educated, kindly, helpless man despite the waves of lust sent off by Richards' wife, Martha Vickers. So Craig moves into the dilapidated Marshal's office with Edgar Buchanan, and begins to renovate the place while four hired guns come into town seriatim to earn Richards' money.
The comedic elements work pretty well in this film, especially when Richard Martin shows up in the movie, playing a Mexican. The serious elements..... well, I'm sure they're there, I just can't take any of it particularly seriously when we don't see any gunfights, just people knocking memorials into the ground, while the good townfolk who want Craig to shoot a cripple mock him for cowardice.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fisheying of he image whenever cinematographer John Nickolaus moves the camera. Perhaps it's all a burlesque of the psychological and symbol-laden A westerns that the 1950s threw up occasionally. That would explain why they decided to call the place Purgatory, when the two towns that actually bear the name are in New England.
