User Reviews

Beverly garland was born in the wrong time. She was an actress ahead of her time, bringing power and grace to even such lame flicks as the Corman films she starred in. In Gunslinger, she's the town sheriff's wife. He gets offed, so she takes over his job to pursue his killers. She's better than the material she's working with, by far. The movie is gray, stilted, and mostly boring. There's some(unintentional)humor with the tire tracks everywhere, people running behind one building to emerge suddenly in front of another (I've heard of false fronts, but this is ridiculous!), and the truly stupid plot line of the newly widowed sheriff falling in love with the guy hired to kill her. Even if she hadn't loved her husband, it had only been something like a week or two since he'd died! And she ends up shooting the guy to death in the end, anyway. No luck with men, this one.

The villain of the piece is another woman, the saloon owner. She's scheming to buy up a bunch of land just in case the railroad goes through and makes her rich. Her plan of action if it doesn't is pretty lame-she'll just steal as much from the town as she can and skedaddle. Hell, it's just her and her hired gun at the end against an entire town. Are you telling me these people aren't armed? Look what happened in real towns of the Old West when bank robbers came in to rob the bank, then were cut down in a hail of bullets by the armed and dangerous town folk.

There'a a lot of pointless talking and riding around, interspersed with a few lame shoot outs. The ending is as grim as usual in a Corman flick, although thank goodness it lacks the moral proselytizing at the end that was in It Conquered the World. The sheriff turns over her badge to Sam Bass and rides off into the sunset, although the movie was so gray that you never saw the sun.

When two gunmen blast the town marshal of Oracle, Texas, in an ambush, the marshal's widow not only kills the shooter, but she also takes over her dead husband's job to track down the accomplice and discover who paid them. Low-budget producer & director Roger Corman cut a different trail with the off-beat 1956 western "Gunslinger" by making the western hero into a heroine. This represents one of the earliest examples of a feminist horse opera. Beverly Garland stars as Ruth Hood, the widow who wears the star and lays down the law, at least for a week until her replacement arrives. Chiefly, "Gunslinger" illustrates the theme of women versus women. The marshal's wife and an ambitious female entrepreneur saloon owner go toe-to-toe so women versus women qualifies as the foremost theme of "Gunslinger." Meanwhile, our heroine defies the social patriarchal order when she appropriates her husband's badge to finish the job that he started. The least prevalent theme is women versus men, though Ruth tangles with several guys and guns them down. Corman designed "Gunslinger" as a different kind of movie and could only have been thinking of attracting a female audience as well as dyed-in-the-leather western movie fans. The Charles Griffith & Mark Hanna script unfolds in chronological fashion, charting a week in the life of Oracle, Texas, as the heroine and the villainess await a decision by a railroad firm about whether it will build its rail lines through the town as well as when the new marshal will arrive.

The most important theme in "Gunslinger" is women versus women. The entire movie is a showdown between two women with neither prepared to give an inch. When Ruth Hood brings her husband, Marshal Scott Hood (William Schallert of "Hour of the Gun"), her breakfast, she has no idea that two gunmen working for Erica Page (Allison Hayes of "The Steel Jungle") who runs the Red Dog Saloon are poised to kill him. Scott tells Ruth that he has been out all night trying to track down a killer Nate Signal. Erica Page's name comes up in the conversation because she warned him about Marshal Hood's interest in him and got away from the lawman could catch him. Ruth sees Erica as the source of all the trouble in Oracle. Scott shrugs and asks his wife, "How, who in the world could stand up to that woman?" Ruth asserts that she could stand up to Erica. Before his husband dies, Ruth has indicated that she can stand up against Erica, foreshadowing their feud. At Scott's funeral, Ruth shoots the gunman standing alongside Erica and goads Mayor Gideon Polk into pinning the badge on her so she can smoke out the murderer. When Polk suggests that the two men did it alone, Ruth rejects this theory. Neither one knew her husband well enough to want to kill him. No, she contends that somebody else hired them and the guilty party had a reason to want her husband dead. She plans to remain marshal until she find the person behind the murder of her husband. Later, after Scott dies, Ruth imposed the curfew on Erica's saloon that Scott had not enforced so that Erica has to close up at 3 AM. Following the funeral and Ruth being sworn in as marshal, Ruth visits the Red Dog Saloon. When Erica refuses to shut down, Ruth and she have a brief fight and Ruth knocks her out. and forces Erica to shut down after 3 AM.

Indeed, the entire plot of "Gunslinger" concerns the rivalry between Ruth as lawman and Erica as an entrepreneur who wants to own the land that the railroad will have to cross before it arrives in town. The second most important theme in "Gunslinger" is women versus society. The mayor isn't overly enthusiastic about swearing Ruth in as marshal to replace her husband. Ruth's deputy shares the mayor's sentiment. He observes as she is buckling on her gun belt, "I reckon some people won't thing it proper for a new widow to go around in pants, even if they are black." Ruth retorts, "Did you ever see a peace officer in a corset?" This reflects the feeling that the men and women of the Oracle, or what constitutes the society, won't feel good about a woman taking over a man's job. Similarly, Erica finds herself up against the same prejudice when Mayor Polk visits her saloon after hours one evening. Polk has discovered when he pored over the deeds in the land office that Erica has extended her notes on property. In fact, Erica is buying up property that has been selected by the land commission as the suggested right of way for the railroad depot. Polk believes that Erica's gamble is "the height of speculation. He reminds her that the railroad doesn't have to come through Oracle. "Of course," he points out, "you realize how the town will feel if . . ." The implication is that the citizens of Oracle won't like Erica's highhandedness. Erica replies, "Sometimes I lie awake at night two or three seconds worrying about it." Clearly, Erica doesn't care what society thinks about her.

Ranking third is the theme of women versus men. Erica hires a professional gunslinger, Cane Miro (John Ireland of "Red River") to kill Ruth, but Cane is not in any hurry to earn his three thousand dollars. Meanwhile, Ruth proves her mettle against men by gunning down the assailant that murdered Scott in the first scene. Later, at Scott's funeral, Ruth slings dirt into a gunman's face, snatches a deputy's six-gun and blasts the man. As it turns out, Ruth recognized the man at the funeral as the accomplice. Later, Ruth guns down a bank robber. After she meets Cane, she gives him five days to clear out of town. "Gunslinger" is a top-notch feminist western from the late 1950s that thrusts a woman into a role usually reserved for men.

The first script by Mark Hanna (The Amazing Colossal Man) and the second from Charles B. Griffith (Death Race 2000), Gunslinger is one of the few times that director Roger Corman found himself going over schedule.

Corman may have claimed that Gunslinger could have bee "one of the worst experiences of my life" and Allison Hayes may have wanted to leave the film during shooting - she broke her arm slipping in mud and Corman still shot close-ups while she was waiting for the ambulance, but at least star Beverly Garland enjoyed herself. In the book Beverly Garland: Her Life and Career, she said, "I think I was the first woman to play a marshal in a movie western. Roger would often cast against type in those days. I could never resist a plum role like a lady marshal in a genre that would never have considered such a gender reversal like that before."

She played Rose Hood, who has become the marshall of Oracle, Texas after her husband is killed. Erica Page (Allison Hayes), the owner of a saloon - man, this town was woke early - gets into a fight with our heroine because she doesn't want to close at 3 AM. To get back at her, Erica hires a killer to murder the temporary marshall.

Seriously, this movie totally goes wild by the end with nearly every character killed off. Corman said, "My Texas distributor arrived in the city where I was filming and asked me how it was going. I told him that I thought that it was good but that there was too much violence and passion, and he answered, "Roger, I've been in this business for forty years, and you've been in it for just two. Let me tell you that no one has ever made a film with too much passion and violence." So I pressed on. Everyone was dying. At the end of the film half of the city was dead."

By the number of reviews here, it is easy to classify this low budget, color western as a cult film. Pretty good considering the early part of American International history, it's hampered by a strange structure breaking down scenes into date, like a celluloid calendar. Never since "Johnny Guitar" with Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge had there been such a battle on screen like the one here between Beverly Garland and Alison Hayes. Like the monster from outer space in "It Conquered the World", Hayes is about taking over the town and has Garland's husband (William Schallert) gunned down in the opening scene. Garland has herself declared sheriff, and with the help of John Ireland, sets out to stop the corruption in the town, starting with the den of iniquity that Hayes runs as a front for her criminal activities.

All eyes and ears are on Garland and Hayes when the two are together. Their first confrontation happens to be at Schallert's funeral and is followed by another at the saloon which results in a knock-down brawl between the two. Hayes sicks not only her gang on Garland, but her tough as nails dancing girls as well. Margaret Campbell stands out among the supporting cast as the town's voice of reason. Garland remains tough but sincere, while Hayes is completely over the top. It's fun and sometimes a bit campy, but the cheesiness of its theme prevents it from being a truly good movie.

It's just a terrible injustice here that "Gunslinger" is saddled with a 2.8 IMDb rating as I write this. Come on - this is a Roger Corman film, that should be good for at least a bonus point, no? Actually, I never knew Corman did a Western, so this was a bit of a treat stumbling across it on Encore Westerns last night. I have to say, I was hooked the minute Rose Hood (Beverly Garland) shot the guy at her husband's funeral. That took some moxie, which Garland had plenty of.

With the words, "Pin it on", Rose takes over as the town sheriff and goes after the bad guys and gals that want to run the show in Oracle, Texas. The primary villain is Erica Page (Allison Hayes), proprietor of the Red Dog Saloon, and architect of a major land grab, buying up local properties in anticipation of a possible railroad passing through the town. I had to admire the way Miss Page managed her cash flow; when she pays someone for the land she just bought, she sends out her puppy dog 'little man' Jake (Jonathan Haze) to kill him and bring the money back. This strategy must have played out more than the single time we get to see it, which makes me wonder why all those dead former landowners never roused anyone's suspicion.

Say, can you have a Corman flick without the obligatory cat-fight? Garland mixes it up with Hayes in an early encounter at the Red Dog, starting with a right cross to the face. They didn't get to do much more than roll around on the floor after that, which didn't make it as exciting as the one in Corman's other 1956 film "Swamp Women". Garland was in that one too, and in the middle of the hot steamy swamp, it wasn't hard to come up with an excuse for a wet blouse tussle. Gee, couldn't the two gals have thrown a beer at each other before the rumpus started?

Heading up the cast is John Ireland as the titled Gunslinger, but that's probably a dubious honor considering Garland appears to have more screen time. As Cane Miro (love that name!), he has the best line of dialog in the picture. After gunning down Nate Signo, he says to Rose - "I'll help you get your worm bait back to town". Ah, the imagery.

You know, you have to hand it to veteran character actor William Schallert for the job he did negotiating a credit for less than a minute of screen time at the start of the picture. He was the town marshal and husband of Rose Hood, who didn't make it past the opening scene. Imagine making a living out of bit parts like that!