Gunmen from Laredo

As someone who grew up watching B westerns during the 1950's from that point of view not a terribly bad movie. Some of the fight scenes could use a little more realism, but Robert Knapp gave a decent performance. However, there isn't much surprise with the plot as this is standard for most B westerns. The return of the hero for revenge. Good supporting cast. My biggest complaint would be the sets, they really looked cheap and the sound editing could be better. For a 1950's western it wasn't the worst I've ever seen. Mention was made about the actress who portrayed Rosita...very pretty and it was explained that she was Mexican not Indian.

Robert Knapp and Maureen Hingert (billed as Jana Davi) make a handsome couple after the former finds the latter tied to a tree - as you do - in this Columbia potboiler shot in pretty colour in what looks like a park.

The cast talk and fight, then fight and talk; but most of the action actually consists of people riding about on horseback. The End.

It's odd that Columbia would be marketing this cheap 60-minutes in the middle of TV's cowboy craze, (1959) . Really, who's going to pay to see something they can get for free on Bonanza or Wagon Train. My guess is that the oater was done for drive-in's as a Technicolor second feature. Conjecture aside, the movie's a pretty dismal product. The locations never leave greater LA, while the acting goes from terrible (Rosita) to journeyman (the marshal) to somewhere in between (Reardon). Then too, the script meanders all over, like the writer's afraid he might leave out some western cliché, which goes from revenge to Indians to showdowns to romance, to a windstorm thrown in. Trouble is they're more cobbled together than successfully blended. Anyhow, Knapp tries hard to bring off his tough-guy role, but frankly his slender frame is anything but imposing, especially when he wrestles the brawny Colorados. He'd really do better as a college fraternity man. About the only reason to catch the hour are the nicely photographed colors of the San Fernando Valley at its most verdant.

A band of bad men rustle a man's cattle and then frame him for the murder of their brother. He is sent to a New Mexico prison, but the walls couldn't hold him. Once he escapes, he heads for Laredo where the men who wronged him are. Extremely corny and badly acted story that was so phony I could barely watch it. Don't corral this sway backed nag.

A man comes back from prison to take revenge on the men who framed him. Along the way he picks up the phoniest-looking Indian "maiden" in recent memory (Lucille Ball dressed herself up as Pocahontas in an episode of "I Love Lucy" and looked more authentic than this girl does) which gets him mixed up in Indian troubles. A bunch of other stuff happens, none of it interesting and all of it badly done. The acting is amateurish, even though there are several solid character actors (Paul Birch, Don Harvey, Charles Horvath) present--a result of the almost non-existent direction of producer Wallace MacDonald. The "script" is an unstructured, meandering mess; it looks like MacDonald only shot every couple of pages of it instead of the whole thing, or maybe that's just the way it was written. The "action" scenes are laughable; grade-school kids playing Cowboys & Indians could have staged them better. I'm sure that not many of the few people who saw this thing knows how it ends; it's so maddeningly poor in all departments that I can't imagine anyone sticking around to find out. I sure didn't. Don't waste your time on this dog.