Blackjack Ketchum, Desperado

When a friend in New Mexico is about to be shot, Tom Ketchum draws his gun and kills the brother of Jared Tetlow, a wealthy cattleman. Tom goes to a ranch run by Nita Riordan and her father, where a relationship begins and marriage is discussed.

Tetlow returns, learns from Laurie Webster about the shooting and vows to get vengeance against the man who killed his brother. A cattle war begins as well, but law and order prevails and Tom decides to stay and settle down.

Based on a Louis L'amour, blackjack Ketchum, desperado features a good cast, but it's a fairly pedestrian western which has too much gabbing and longwinded face-off. It can be a bit dull and flat. However, it has some good location - Alabama Hills, Lone Pine - and great cinematography and some good action scenes. Victor Jory laps it up as the villain , however Howard Duff looks stiff as a board. It's a pity this isn't great as the novel was ace.

Despite the fact that it was easy to predict how the movie would end after about twenty minutes, it was a decent Western. Howard Duff did a good job as Blackjack Ketchum. The movie did a good job in showing Blackjack not only as a man with a fast gun, but someone with intelligence. Other than the predictable plot, the other weak part of the movie was the end. Although Jared Tetlow was portrayed as a man who let others do his dirty work for him, it made no sense not to have Blackjack and Tetlow square off at the end. I guess the audience was suppose to forget Blackjack killed Tetlow's brother at the beginning of the movie.

I really wanted to like this Western, but had to give it 5 out of 10 stars. It increasingly became painful to watch. The acting was wooden, especially Howard Duff's, and many others in the large cast. The main fault in the movie is the preposterous overblown script. I'll give a few examples: The heroine rides out to the bad guys' camp at night (a place she isn't familiar with and has no "right" being there), and lo and behold overhears the plan to stampede the herd, which resulted in the death of her father. The rich, powerful leader of the bad guys kills many leading citizens at point blank range, just like that. The bad guys easily intimidate a jury into voting a bad guy innocent. In one incredible move, the bad guys buy up all the guns and ammunition in town, so the good guys' posse is helpless! Another unheard of thing (so many silly stuff, one after another, I never saw in another movie) is that the bad guys have so many cattle and no place to water them, that they have to buy upland in the area, but no one will sell to them. One silly plot ploy after another.

I have seen far far worse from producer Sam Katzman for sure, I would even say that only the opening credits score announces Katzman's style, no matter the name. For the rest, everything is foreseeable but quite good with a convincing Victor Jory as the villain, a ruthless cattle baron seeking revenge against Howard Duff's character who killed Jory's brother in self defense. So, aas you can see, it's an already seen scheme, topic. Earl Bellamy was then a newcomer in the movie industry before leaving for TV one. A good western without great expectations and worth watching for western buffs. For the period, late fifties, yes, it could have been in color.