Seven Hours to Dawn

The last three minutes of this episode are the best three minutes of any Gunsmoke episode.

John Drew Barrymore, who looked like a wimp compared to all the tough cowboy actors in his gang, takes over a town and spends seven hours to dawn robbing everyone in Dodge City.

Why would any gang go house to house stealing silver pots and gold watches? It did not make much sense to have around ten thugs treeing a town just to rob the locals. It seems to me that they could have just robbed the freight office, the bank, and the Longbranch Saloon, in about 90 minutes or less?

The sad drama of thugs herding dozens of innocent townspeople around, and beating up some of them (and shooting one) gets played out with Marshal Dillon, Festus, Doc Adams, and Miss Kitty watching helpless.

At the beginning of the episode, when Barrymore walks into Dillon's office, it seems to me that Dillon could have taken him out. Having watched every episode of Gunsmoke, there is no question that Dillon was fast enough to have put slugs in Barrymore and some of his henchmen.

Instead, Dillon gives up, and lets himself and everyone else get pushed around. At some point, Dillon decides to fight back and make a break for it. That did not make a lot of sense, since there were ten or more outlaws walking around armed and ready to kill. The villains shoot Dillon off his horse, and leave him for dead in the middle of the street.

The fantastic ending had Doc Adams pulling four bullets out of Dillon, and five minutes later Dillon is planning his revenge. The most memorable and best part of this episode is Doc Adams. He stands up to the gang, he outsmarts the villains, he saves Dillon's life, and he avoids getting caught. Episodes that featured Doc Adams were always my favorites.

I will say that Marshal Matt Dillon was one tough bird. In this episode alone, he gets takes four slugs and in just a few hours he is sitting up in a chair talking. Man that is the definition of tough. It is either him or the expertise of Doc Adams that can have someone near death up and about in just a few short hours.

But even with the 'for-TV-sake' script, this episode did provided a nice hour of entertainment that the viewer just had to watch. A nice show.

It all begins when a large group of bandits come into Dodge at night and demand all the people living in the town to give them all the valuables. They even makes sure all the businesses open and give them every bit of cash available. With everyone leaving their valuables outside their houses the bandits declare that they will be gone by dawn and no one hurt if all cooperates.

With the Marshal being the first one they disarm, he tries to think of a way to escape. But when he finally decides to ride out, the bandits are waiting and Matt drives into a wall of gunfire. It looks hopeless for the people of Dodge.

An interesting plot with great characters.

If anybody thought Gunsmoke was going to become kinder and gentler because John Meston left the scene...well...so much for that notion. This is as rough, violent and intense an episode as had yet been seen in Gunsmoke. The towering, indomitable Matt Dillon is beaten up, gunned down and left for dead on Front Street. Miss Kitty is almost raped at the top of the Long Branch staircase. And the entire town of Dodge is subjugated by a vicious gang. All's well that ends well but this scenario looked mighty bleak the whole run time and certainly kept me in suspense.

A great cast really helps the cause. John Drew Barrymore is sort of an evil Clint Eastwood as Mace Gore, boss of the gang. Johnny Seven is the vile lowlife who maltreats Kitty. And Allan Jaffe, one of the gang-members...well...let's just say he looks like the very worst sort of psychopath.

A very great episode, and I would have given it a 10 were it not for the heavyhanded use of musical cues to accentuate this point or that.