Fred MacMurray is the judge in a small Western town. A man named Rudy Hayes (Christopher Dark) has killed a farmer and been found guilty by a jury of his peers, although it's hard to imagine a peer of this unkempt miscreant. The whole town wants to see this guy hanged and MacMurray has already decided that that is what his sentence will be tomorrow.
Flies in the ointment. First of all, Rudy Hayes has rather a large extended family, clearly descended from the Kallikaks or the Jukes. Two of these goons are already hanging around town, smilingly telling the judge and his assistant (Edgar Buchanan) and the sheriff (John Ericson) that if good ol' Rudy dies, they die too. Well, says everybody, there's only the two of them. But then two or three other Hayes relatives ride into town, each meaner lookin' than the last. Or -- let me take that back. Nobody looks meaner than Lee Van Cleef. They gang up on the sheriff and beat him. Then they rearrange MacMurray's face. They terrorize the whole town, even the victim's widow, so that everyone begins wondering if, rather than hanging the prisoner, it wouldn't be better to follow the hoodlums' suggestion and, well, just kinda BANISH good ol' Rudy and make him get out of the territory. Unbearable pressure is brought upon the judge to follow this path, just as pressure was brought to bear on sheriff Gary Cooper in "High Noon." Does Fred MacMurray give in and simply banish Rudy? Or does he sentence him to hang? I leave it to you, the discerning and experienced watcher of Westerns, to guess.
There's a second fly in the ointment. Judge MacMurray has been engaged to Joan Weldon and he plans to marry her as soon as he buys that little house. But he's a circuit judge and this takes him out of town a good deal. During one of his trips, Weldon and Ericson have fallen in love, but both are reluctant to tell MacMurray.
Enough of the plot. Not so much because I'm reluctant to give any of its developments away, as that it's not genuinely worth going into in any further detail.
Of the acting it can be said that this is a good, seasoned cast of Hollywood regulars -- MacMurray, Ericson, Van Cleef, Buchanan, Robert Middleton, Edward Franz, Marie Windsor -- you'll recognize a lot of faces. And in this inexpensive and somewhat tired Western, they illustrate their range.
They ground out these B features like Sonicburgers in the 50s but their day was coming to an end. "Gunsmoke" was around the corner.
Flies in the ointment. First of all, Rudy Hayes has rather a large extended family, clearly descended from the Kallikaks or the Jukes. Two of these goons are already hanging around town, smilingly telling the judge and his assistant (Edgar Buchanan) and the sheriff (John Ericson) that if good ol' Rudy dies, they die too. Well, says everybody, there's only the two of them. But then two or three other Hayes relatives ride into town, each meaner lookin' than the last. Or -- let me take that back. Nobody looks meaner than Lee Van Cleef. They gang up on the sheriff and beat him. Then they rearrange MacMurray's face. They terrorize the whole town, even the victim's widow, so that everyone begins wondering if, rather than hanging the prisoner, it wouldn't be better to follow the hoodlums' suggestion and, well, just kinda BANISH good ol' Rudy and make him get out of the territory. Unbearable pressure is brought upon the judge to follow this path, just as pressure was brought to bear on sheriff Gary Cooper in "High Noon." Does Fred MacMurray give in and simply banish Rudy? Or does he sentence him to hang? I leave it to you, the discerning and experienced watcher of Westerns, to guess.
There's a second fly in the ointment. Judge MacMurray has been engaged to Joan Weldon and he plans to marry her as soon as he buys that little house. But he's a circuit judge and this takes him out of town a good deal. During one of his trips, Weldon and Ericson have fallen in love, but both are reluctant to tell MacMurray.
Enough of the plot. Not so much because I'm reluctant to give any of its developments away, as that it's not genuinely worth going into in any further detail.
Of the acting it can be said that this is a good, seasoned cast of Hollywood regulars -- MacMurray, Ericson, Van Cleef, Buchanan, Robert Middleton, Edward Franz, Marie Windsor -- you'll recognize a lot of faces. And in this inexpensive and somewhat tired Western, they illustrate their range.
They ground out these B features like Sonicburgers in the 50s but their day was coming to an end. "Gunsmoke" was around the corner.