Gun Fight

An article in a recent issue of Film Comment highlighted the work of the "madly prolific" director Edward L. Cahn. From 1955 to 1962, he directed 48 films, most of them of the B variety. A handful are available on DVD, and I started by looking at a Western called Gun Fight, one of 11 movies he made in 1961 alone.

The film, a brief 67 minutes (ideal for double bills), stars James Brown (neither the singer nor the football player, but instead an actor best known for his TV role on Rin Tin Tin) as a recently mustered soldier who is headed for Laramie to go into the cattle business with his brother. The stagecoach he is on is robbed, and we quickly realize that the bandits are led by Brown's brother, Gregg Palmer. Brown is disgusted by his brother's lawlessness, and heads for Jackson Hole to get into the trapping business, taking along a saloon girl he has fallen in love with (Joan Staley).

In a kind of Cain and Abel parallel, Palmer and his gang follow Brown, thinking he has betrayed them. There will be a final showdown, and I hope I'm not spoiling things by saying that blood is thicker and water and the brothers will reunite and fight on the same side.

Gun Fight is no way, shape, or form a good movie. It could a vehicle for Mystery Science Theater 3000, particularly with the cheap sets and costumes, which look even worse than the TV Westerns of that day. I nearly laughed out loud at seeing Brown in his fringed buckskins. The acting is also uniformly wooden, particularly that of Staley, who was best known as being Playboy's Miss November, 1958 (two bits of Playboy trivia about her--she was pregnant when she shot her centerfold, and she had a granddaughter who also became a Playmate). Staley was in her over her head, even for a B-film, as she indicated sadness by dropping her head into her arm and making crying noises.

There is still something charming about Gun Fight, whether it's a nostalgia for a certain kind of film that isn't made anymore, or whether it's just that this is how things were done--you cranked them out and the people either went to see them or they didn't. I would guess Gun Fight had no more than a ten-day shooting schedule, and used sets that were probably reused many, many times.

It's also somewhat charming to see how whitewashed the West was. Now, thanks to shows like Deadwood, there's no chance of looking at a dance hall girl without knowing what her real profession was, or seeing a bunch of bandits who don't swear (but they do sell a squaw in exchange for a Winchester). The bloodless way they die is also comically quaint.

I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to recommend Gun Fight, but if you're a certain age it may take you back to a more innocent time, and has a lot of (unintentional) laughs.