User reviews

Robert Taylor aged more strangely than any of the stars. From the beautiful young man that ravished Garbo in "Camille", he emerged from World War 2 ravished himself. I don't know a lot about him, but I suspect his war experiences had a major emotional effect on him that really showed in his face. Not only did he look worn, he also became far more interesting as an actor. Here he is 56, in the last two years of his life, and his craggy face and striking blue eyes portray a world-weariness that carries tragic weight. He is that often seen Western character, the famous gunfighter tired of killing. I believe Clint Eastwood must have based his character in "Unforgiven" on Taylor's performance here. Taylor makes this fairly ordinary Western extraordinary.

I'm sorry, but I just couldn't get over seeing Chad Everett in this western film. Now I don't think he did a bad job, but seeing this handsome actor who is most closely associated with playing a TV doctor as a gunfighter took me by surprise--as I grew up watching him on "Medical Center".

The film is one of Robert Taylor's last films. As he was older and more haggard, the writers did a good job in dealing with this instead of pretending he still was the man with matinée idol good looks. Here, he plays an aging gunfighter who is sick and tired of the violence--and he actually tried NOT to fight and would back down if possible. I liked this aspect of the film and it kept me watching--as well as my wife, who is NOT a fan of the genre.

However, aside from both Taylor and Everitt doing a god job, the rest of the film is very, very standard. It's the usual big nasty guy with money versus the innocent farmers/ranchers. While I don't give the film super-high marks, it is well acted and interest interesting and a decent late appearance for Taylor.

Miss Mexico at only 16 years old? Why hasn't this been brought up? Maybe no Oscars, but we'll worth mentioning...😊

Obviously a former TV product but eventually put on the big screen, as were DUEL and THE KILLERS (1964), because above average stuff. This typical early sixties western seems to belong to those which were some kind of transition between the John Ford and Han Hathaway era ( forties and fifties) and the new age, the Sam Pecinpah's or Monte Hellman's ones), and not like the Andrew McLaglen's films, made in the sixties and early seventies, and still in the fifties atmosphere. So, this very one could be compared to THE LAST CHALLENGE, with also Chad Everett and co starring this time Glenn Ford, also for MGM, another plot showing the end of the old west and old timers, but in a more interesting and bitter, darker way than this one. Here, Chad Everett is somewhere also the lead character's "sidekick ", but I expected more. That's my own opinion folks, that remains a good western, made by a director who, after a goood start - NIGHT PASSAGE - lost his way thru Disney garbage stuff, before resuming with this one.

A very decent western, if you discount hilarious details like patent leather indoor furniture for a film set decades before the technology came into being.. The art direction department was inept and possibly thought no viewer would notice such details.

Small time actor John Davis Chandler makes a notable appearance as a baddie named Sundance. Robert Taylor is more convincing here than in most other films--an exception being a little known crime film directed by William Castle called "The Night Walker' made 3 years before this western.

Probably the best role Robert Taylor had in the last five years of his life was in this made for television western, Return of the Gunfighter. Though no new dramatic trails are broken here, Taylor is just right for the part of a character very much like Gregory Peck's Jim Ringo in The Gunfighter.

Unlike Peck who's returned to a wife and child he abandoned for the wild ways of his youth, Taylor has no family. We meet him after he cashes out of a poker game after catching one of the players cheating. When the cheat objects and draws on him, Taylor shoots him down and just mutters "why won't they leave me alone."

He's just tired of it all, but it turns out his skill is needed by an old friend Rodolfo Hoyos who's being forced off his land. Taylor is summoned but arrives too late.

He does pick up a traveling companion of sorts in young gun Chad Everett who's got three mean brothers on his trail. Let's say that the two of them help each other in their situations, though for Everett it does cause a crisis of conscience as you'll see if you watch the film.

And watch it you should. Robert Taylor liked doing westerns, you can see it in his performances in them. He made fun of the 'iron jockstrap' parts like Ivanhoe, but he loved going west. Personally I think he should have concentrated on them in the sixties or looked for a big budget television series like his ex-wife Barbara Stanwyck had.

Taylor's chief nemesis is Lyle Bettger the man who killed his friend and others. Bettger once again brings one of his sadistic psychos to the screen and effectively. This one does have a healthy respect for Taylor's reputation and skill as he tries to tell young punk John David Chandler, when Chandler seems to buffalo Taylor in a saloon. The fact that Chandler had several friends with him, kind of stacked the deck. It's a scene very similar to one that John Wayne and George Kennedy did in The Sons of Katie Elder.

This was the second of two films that Chad Everett did with Robert Taylor and he always spoke of Taylor's kindness to him as a young player and his generosity in that he never worried about Everett stealing any scenes.

Taylor was back at MGM for this final film with them, the studio where he held the longest contract in screen history. Had Return of the Gunfighter been made 10 year earlier, it surely would have gotten a theatrical release.

I'm not sure if "Return of the Gunfighter" is a sequel to "The Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck but if it is it's a far cry from the original.

The overall story was fair enough and could even be said that it was good. Ben Wyatt (Robert Taylor) is a retired, yet still fast, gunfighter that's out to find justice for his friend Luis Domingo. He uses Luis's daughter, Anisa (Ana Martin), to find his killers. Along the way he befriends Lee Sutton (Chad Everett) who becomes an essential character.

It would have been an OK to good movie if it weren't for Anisa and Lee Sutton. They were two very simple characters that I found nauseating. Anisa, the simplest of all, was the naïve, protected, childlike character with the features to match. She had to be the cleanest, softest-skinned Mexican-farmer's daughter ever. That just helped complete the innocent virginal image.

Lee Sutton was a simpleton of a different kind. He was the young, dumb, full of you-know-what kind of simpleton. I will say that he partially evolved by movie's end but not enough to shake off that first impression.

"Return of the Gunfighter" is about gunfighting after all just like kung fu movies are about kung fu. It's almost as if the characters get in the way of the true objective. No characters were particularly captivating, they were all just a means to an end.

Apparently Metro Goldwyn Mayer, while giving the movie a theatrical release overseas, sent this western directly to television in North America. It's pretty easy to see why MGM wasn't totally confident that the movie would attract domestic audiences. The script is the main problem. The story is made up of many elements and plot turns you will have seen in countless westerns before; I bet even audiences in 1967 found the story clichéd. Not only that, the script insults the audience by taking more than half of the movie to set everything up; there's no reason why it should have taken so long for this creaky story to define everything. Also, that first half of the movie is pretty dull, with almost no action or anything else that might be considered lively. The second half of the movie is a bit more energetic, but it's too little and too late. Why the present owners of the movie thought it was worth a DVD release through their on demand video line, I cannot say.

I never cared for robert taylor in anything he did and chad everett was a spoiled child from birth so the match up was inconsequential ... matinee idols were basically figments of followers imaginations ... the usual suspects as the bad guys were there... michael pate, lyle bettger, john davis chandler, mort mills, ad nausea ...

Return of the Gunfighter is directed by James Neilson and adapted to screenplay by Robert Buckner from a story by Burt Kennedy. It stars Robert Taylor, Chad Everett, Ana Martín, Mort Mills, Lyle Bettger, John Davis Chandler and Michael Pate. Music is by Hans Salter and the Metrocolor cinematography is by Ellsworth Fredericks.

Aging gunfighter Ben Wyatt (Taylor) receives a request to go aid an old friend who's in trouble. Upon arrival at the family ranch he finds that both his friend and his wife have been killed. Locating the surviving daughter, he teams up with hot headed drifter Lee Sutton (Everett) and sets about avenging the murder of his friend and the girls parents.

By this time Robert Taylor was winding down his career and his life, 1967 would see him depart from the Western genre of film, how splendid to find he doesn't in the slightest disgrace himself here.

His character is weather worn, a gunfighter tired of all the killing, of looking over his shoulder all the time. This proves to be perfect for Taylor, who gives the role a believable sense of pathos, the passing of time and that fate will not leave him alone hangs heavy. Breaking it down it's a straight forward narrative, where the one time bad guy is called on to use his deadly skills for some good, to rid the plains of some nasty sorts. The relationship with the young upstart (Everett the whitest teeth in the west) builds nicely, leading to a finale that attacks the emotions of the major players.

There's a healthy quotient of action, decently staged by the tech crew, the Old Tuscon locations are nicely photographed, while support players impact with credit on the story. It's not all plain sailing, Salter's score is sometimes well in keeping with the era, but at other times it comes off like a Sccoby-Doo piece. Susension of disbelief is of course required, none more so than when Ana Martín goes about the town pretending to be a boy and everyone falls for it - she is simply too pretty to remotely pass as male, and the appearance of Butch and Sundance in the plot is most odd.

Yet it's a lovely Oater this, feeling more like one from the 1950s than the tail end of the 60s. Highly recommended to Taylor fans and fans of traditional Western fare. 8/10

Decent 1960s Western with decent performances by most of the supporting cast. Robert Taylor looked 70 instead of 55, but looking back, I assume lung cancer which killed him two years later, was already attacking him. Fitting ending for Mr. Taylor's Western career. Miss Martin was very beautiful and sort of amazed her career really didn't take off internationally.

This movie was made very near the end of Robert Taylor's life; a tragic, tragic loss. He was simply superb in this film, proving his earliest critics, wrong, wrong, wrong about his acting skills. I read recently the he was very compliant with the wishes of the studio bosses who made him a star in the 1930s. We must give them credit for being very successful in the use of his image and talent. In this film he is nothing like any of the characters of his earliest films, which demonstrates his extraordinary acting range. Like his other films, his performance is very seamless and smooth. You can tell that he is very comfortable in the skin of his character. I read recently that he never tried to stretch himself into roles that were not comfortable. The story itself was a bit stupid/illogical (the reason for the 9*) but all of the actors performed at a very high level. I recommend the film because of Taylor's performance. Watch his face, his expressive eyes and listen to that magnificent voice ..... He had "it". He always had "it".

Ben Wyatt , an ageing gunfighter, reluctantly answers a call for help from his old friend Luis Domingo , whose land is threatened by a greedy cattle baron. Arriving at the ranch to find Domingo and his wife dead and their daughter Anisa gone, Ben sets off in search of Anisa and the killers

Return of the gunfighter is Robert Taylor's last western, a genre he loved starring in, and what a way to bow out. A well-plotted, well-paced western with thoughtful performances, especially from Robert Taylor who imbues a gun weary character, who is fed up of killing, but has to do the right thing, and help his late friend's daughter bring her father's killers to justice. Things get a bit more dramatic when it's revealed that Chad Everett, who has feeling for the girl, is the villain's brother. Lyle Bettger is the main villain, but it's John Davis Chandler as Sundance, his hired thug, who steals the scene in the villainy stakes with his snarling face.

The Return of the gunfighter is an excellent western, with some exciting action, and great location. In my eyes, a western tale of the good guys overcoming the bad hombres never gets old. Seen this film many times on the BBC in my teens.