Rebel in Town

Most Westerns use one of a limited number of standard plots, but it's hard to categorize this movie. Its setting -- a small frontier town -- merely serves as a background for a drama of revenge and reconciliation which could easily be recast as a Greek tragedy. Its central question certainly rises above the usual concerns of Westerns: can the sacrifice of one man's guilty son make up for the death of another man's innocent son?

Or, as J. Carroll Naish puts it in the last scene: "What the sons of some men do to the sons of others ... there's a tragedy of the world."

John Payne, (sporting a mustache), gets top billing here but his character is absent from many of the movie's key scenes. Ben Cooper actually plays the main character as his feelings of guilt over the death of an innocent boy propels most of the plot. Ruth Roman seems miscast as a frontier wife and mother. The less said about the two juvenile performers, (Bobby Clark and Mimi Gibson), the better.

There's a vivid flogging scene in the movie's second half in which J. Carroll Naish takes a whip to the back of his son, John Smith, who's tied shirtless to a tree. This may be the American cinema's only major whipping in which a father strikes his own son.

Hollywood made a slew of so called "B" westerns during the 1950s, mainly black and white 80 minutes jobs meant to fill a second feature at the local theatre.....when I saw the top notch actors in this film I figured it would be worth watching and it was very good....John Payne, J. Carrol Nash, John Smith, Ben Johnson and Ruth Roman round out a very solid cast.....in a lot of these so called B westerns there were a lot of films about confederate soldiers on the run rummaging and pillaging so the plot was somewhat familiar....what set the tone for this film was the slaying of a young boy who was gunned down by a rebel coward, who thought that a cap gun going off was the real thing and he turned around in an instant and shot the kid dead...what follows are real character studies of the rebel family and their self righteousness about how a member of their family killed a little boy and the intense manhunt led by John Payne, the boy's father....Ruth Roman plays a very compassionate, caring mother while grieving for her dead son and tries to instill logic and a level head into her husband Payne who starts to lose his cool nearly every moment in the film.....Strange part to the movie when one of the rebel band is rounded up by Payne and brought to his house not knowing he was one of the rebel band....questions follow and soon Payne realizes his "guest" is part of the family that killed his son....a mob scene follows as usual and soon law and order is restored....in the end Payne nails the real killer (John Smith) in a knife fight in a barn as he tries to escape town....his father, J. Carrol Nash forgives Payne in the end for his son's cowardice..... Payne is reunited with his wife who was at the breaking point with her husband's blood thirst for revenge.....a solid, very worthwhile western, considering it was made rather cheaply by a small studio Bel Air productions..but released by United Artists.....

What a tremendous little western, very unusual, far from clichés, a film noir in the western. Excellent characters study, analysis and helped by a jaw dropping photography. Yes, Alfred Werker proves with this film that, during the end of his career, he was a terrific western maker, as much as a Budd Boetticher in his westerns starring Randolph Scott. Don't forget that Alfred Werker was not a western specialist and was also a veteran in the business. And John Payne as impressive here as he was in Phil Karlson's 99 RIVER STREET. Some awesome scenes, very brutal for the period. This little western is underrated, and should be far better known.

Small scale western that holds together well despite unoriginal situations and a low budget.

Most of that can be attributed to the lean direction by the little known Werker and the competence of the players. John Payne is brooding and bitter in the lead occasionally going overboard with with the righteous indignation but by and large he does well. Ben Cooper is also solid as a conscious stricken young man but it's Ruth Roman who stands out with a well balanced performance as Nora Payne, weighted down with grief but compassionate enough to remain clear eyed and level headed while all around her are losing theirs.

Another asset of the film is the use of natural sounds to underscore scenes adding to their import without a lot of intrusive musical cues.

No prize winner but a better than average western.

When an Ex-Confederate patriarch and his four sons stop for supplies on the run after robbing a bank, one of them gets nervous hearing a cocked pistol behind him and turns quickly, blasting a 9 yr old boy playing with a toy pistol. The murder of the child spawns hate and a blind rage for vengeance in the small western town. J. Carroll Naish has one of his best roles as the Bible-spouting sire of a brood of scum, trying to keep them in order. John Payne as the traumatized father of the dead boy gives an unnerving performance as a decent man who's become emotionally unbalanced. His uncertainty and mental disruption are almost palpable as his alarmed wife (Ruth Roman) desperately tries to stifle his increasingly homicidal personality. It's very unsettling to see Payne in this unheroic light...the difference from his usual demeanor draws a very convincing portrait of a severely unbalanced man. Ben Cooper (who usually plays a disturbed role) is uncommonly sympathetic here as the only member of the gang responsible enough to acknowledge guilt for the tragedy, even though his own life is at risk instead of his older brother's, the unrepentant perpetrator. This is definitely several cuts above your average western and sustains viewers'interest throughout. Highly recommended....