As in many westerns, including Richard Thorpe's VENGEANCE VALLEY, or Phil Karlson's GUNMAN'S WALK, it is question of a brothers feud story; here Robert Ryan and Rock Hudson, and in the MGM western, there were Burt Lancaster and Robert Walker. There is always a bad brother and the good brother, as in the Bible you have Cain vs Abel, a recurrent western scheme. And the Civil War element of course enhanced, emphasized, this feud between brothers matters. No surprise in the end. Here, you explore the Universal Studios Budd Boetticher period, before he came to Columbia and the awesome Burt Kennedy's stories, starring Randolph Scott, his best of the best stuff. It is very unusual to see Bob Ryan working for another studio than RKO. The rest of the cast is however typical Universal Studios"home": Rock Hudson, Julia Adams; only Piper Laurie and Tony Curtis or Jeff Chandler missed.... So, this is an efefctive, taut, Boetticher's material. Ray Burr is of course excelent as a genuine villain character.
