Critics have compared Jerry Thorpe's "Day of the Evil Gun" unfairly with John Ford's classic John Wayne western "The Searchers." These two westerns concern the long, arduous, often dangerous quest to find and rescue wives and daughters who have been kidnapped by murderous Apaches. Glenn Ford is cast as Lorn Warfield, a gunfighter who vanished for three years after he killed a man in a duel, but who has returned now to search for his wife and children. At the same time, a neighbor, Owen Forbes (Arthur Kennedy of "Lawrence of Arabia"), who had watched from afar, has fallen in love with Warfield's wife, Angie (Barbara Babcock), and he is determined to find her for himself since he doesn't believe that Lorn deserves her after all she has endured without him by her side. Initially, Lorn wants nothing to do with Forbes, but the two men eventually form an uneasy alliance as they enter Apache infested territory and encounter their share of trouble. "Gunsmoke" and "Rawhide" creator Charles Marquis Warren wrote the story and the screenplay with assistance from "Hell in the Pacific" scenarist Eric Bercovici who went on to write and produce the television mini-series "Shogun."
The toilsome journey proves to be the revelation in this dusty, moralistic oater with neighborly rancher Forbes changing into a cold-bloodied killer while cold-bloodied killer Warfield changes into a pacifist. You can see the change that has overtaken Warfield when the film unfolds. He faces a younger man in the middle of the street who tosses him a six-gun and challenges him to shoot it out. Warfield kicks the revolver into a mud puddle and passes up the opportunity to add another notch to his reputation. Meantime, Warren and Bercovici chronicle the change in Forbes through his wardrobe. Forbes starts out wearing a white hat. By the time that he challenges Warfield in the street, Forbes is wearing a black hat. The finale when they return to the same town that they left finds Forbes prepared to kill Warfield after the latter has traded his revolver to buy clothes for his wife and daughters. About two-thirds of the way through this horse opera, our heroes are taken by the Apaches and left to die at the hands of treacherous Mexicans, specifically DeLeon (Nico Minardos of "Cannon for Cordoba"), and predictably it is Forbes who shoots him. Jerry Thorpe confines the action to a trim 94 minute running time.
Neither Glenn Ford at age 52 nor Arthur Kennedy at age 54 looked like they were in shape to be trudging all over Mexico in pursuit of their abducted loved ones. Indeed, their fist-fighting scenes are knock about affairs, but they look like the over the hill. Nevertheless, the screenplay is solid, but the dialogue is largely forgettable. Veteran western character actor John Anderson and up-and-coming character actor Harry Dean Stanton show up briefly as cavalry deserters. They are in an abandoned town with two wagons loaded with bullets and our heroes ride into this stacked deck believing that the soldiers are straight-up and trustworthy. Anderson proves to be quite a shot with a single-barreled shotgun. The protagonists in "Day of the Evil Gun" have more in common to some extent with the killers in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." They move in a straight enough line when they confront their problem, but they run into one problem after another. Dean Jagger of "Twelve O'Clock High" has a minor role as a lunatic who trades with the Apaches. He knows something about the whereabouts of Warfield's women, but he is reluctant to divulge his knowledge until Warfield presses him about the issue. Typically, Apaches as well as Native Americans in general rarely harmed people who were lunatics, and Jimmy Noble (Dean Jagger) has been posing like a lunatic for so long that he almost lets Warfield burn his wagon loaded with trade goods. Altogether, "Day of the Evil Gun" is no "Searchers." The showdown in the abandoned town between the Apaches and the Army deserters reminded me more of John Sturges' "The Law and Jake Wade." Lenser W. Wallace Kelley, no stranger to westerns since he had photographed five oaters previous to "Day of the Evil Gun," makes this tale look better than it has any right to look. The film was shot on location in Durango, Mexico, in locales that you have seen before in "Major Dundee." The shot of Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy riding double on a horse at dusk looks spectacular. Art direction and set decoration is comparably as good.
The toilsome journey proves to be the revelation in this dusty, moralistic oater with neighborly rancher Forbes changing into a cold-bloodied killer while cold-bloodied killer Warfield changes into a pacifist. You can see the change that has overtaken Warfield when the film unfolds. He faces a younger man in the middle of the street who tosses him a six-gun and challenges him to shoot it out. Warfield kicks the revolver into a mud puddle and passes up the opportunity to add another notch to his reputation. Meantime, Warren and Bercovici chronicle the change in Forbes through his wardrobe. Forbes starts out wearing a white hat. By the time that he challenges Warfield in the street, Forbes is wearing a black hat. The finale when they return to the same town that they left finds Forbes prepared to kill Warfield after the latter has traded his revolver to buy clothes for his wife and daughters. About two-thirds of the way through this horse opera, our heroes are taken by the Apaches and left to die at the hands of treacherous Mexicans, specifically DeLeon (Nico Minardos of "Cannon for Cordoba"), and predictably it is Forbes who shoots him. Jerry Thorpe confines the action to a trim 94 minute running time.
Neither Glenn Ford at age 52 nor Arthur Kennedy at age 54 looked like they were in shape to be trudging all over Mexico in pursuit of their abducted loved ones. Indeed, their fist-fighting scenes are knock about affairs, but they look like the over the hill. Nevertheless, the screenplay is solid, but the dialogue is largely forgettable. Veteran western character actor John Anderson and up-and-coming character actor Harry Dean Stanton show up briefly as cavalry deserters. They are in an abandoned town with two wagons loaded with bullets and our heroes ride into this stacked deck believing that the soldiers are straight-up and trustworthy. Anderson proves to be quite a shot with a single-barreled shotgun. The protagonists in "Day of the Evil Gun" have more in common to some extent with the killers in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." They move in a straight enough line when they confront their problem, but they run into one problem after another. Dean Jagger of "Twelve O'Clock High" has a minor role as a lunatic who trades with the Apaches. He knows something about the whereabouts of Warfield's women, but he is reluctant to divulge his knowledge until Warfield presses him about the issue. Typically, Apaches as well as Native Americans in general rarely harmed people who were lunatics, and Jimmy Noble (Dean Jagger) has been posing like a lunatic for so long that he almost lets Warfield burn his wagon loaded with trade goods. Altogether, "Day of the Evil Gun" is no "Searchers." The showdown in the abandoned town between the Apaches and the Army deserters reminded me more of John Sturges' "The Law and Jake Wade." Lenser W. Wallace Kelley, no stranger to westerns since he had photographed five oaters previous to "Day of the Evil Gun," makes this tale look better than it has any right to look. The film was shot on location in Durango, Mexico, in locales that you have seen before in "Major Dundee." The shot of Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy riding double on a horse at dusk looks spectacular. Art direction and set decoration is comparably as good.