Day Of The Outlaw

Day Of The Outlaw is a taut Western, released in 1959, directed by Andre De Toth, that uses a plot seen many times in many different guises--the small group of people who are held captive by a ruthless gang of criminals. The best examples are The Petrified Forest, Key Largo, or Desperate Hours. It can be done in any genre, this time it's the Old West.

The setting is a small town in Wyoming. At the start we're led to believe it's about a struggle between ranchers and farmers, another chestnut in the Western genre. Robert Ryan plays a hard-nosed rancher who sees that a farmer is going to string up barbed wire, which to him is tantamount to a declaration of war. Complicating things is that Ryan had an affair with the farmer's wife (Tina Louise, yes she of Gilligan's Island fame).

But before any bloodshed can happen, a band of cutthroats bursts into the saloon. They have just pulled off a robbery, and are just ahead of pursuing soldiers. They are led by an ex-soldier, played menacingly by Burl Ives. He has an iron grip on his men, and tells them no whiskey and no women, which they do not appreciate.

Ives has a series wound, and the only doctor in town, a vet, removes a bullet from his chest. Ryan realizes that if Ives dies his men will run roughshod. Eventually, he convinces Ives that he knows a way out of town through the mountains, and he leads them to their eventual doom.

As with many of these '50s Westerns, Day Of The Outlaw is economical, coming in at ninety minutes, not wasting a shot. It also holds suspense very well. At the beginning of the action, I was wondering how Ryan would defeat these men (of course he would, it's a movie after all). But I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't by gun play, but letting the bandits feed on each other. The ending was particularly satisfying.

Also in the cast was David Nelson, son of Ozzie and Harriet, who plays a baby-faced member of the gang who has second thoughts about his life.