User Reviews

I'll keep this short and simple. Anyone who is a fan of Gunsmoke knows that Kitty and stagecoaches don't mix! lol So in that regard, this episode breaks no new ground. On the other hand, the worst episode of Gunsmoke is spectacular. So there's that! So in summary and in the immortal words of Festus Haggen: "Quit 'yer faunchin' and 'yer belly achin' and get watchin'!" :~)

Good episode. And we suspect they were trying out the Night Stalker for a series of his own.

Kitty Russell has been away from Dodge City for four weeks. As she is returning on a stagecoach, the stage is stopped by a gang of outlaws led by a man named Grant Shay. Shay had previously investigated the passengers on the stagecoach and knows there are a number of prominent people on board. The goal is kidnapping the passengers and exacting various ransom amounts for each.

Back in Dodge City, Matt Dillon is anxious because the stagecoach is late in arriving. (Dillon's anxiety is interesting, because he is usually fairly nonchalant about his relationship with Kitty. This is one of the occasions the character actually reveals the level of care and concern he has for Kitty.) When the horses pulling the empty stagecoach run into a farmer's cornfield, he drives the stage to Dodge. The Marshal and Festus Haggen set out to investigate the whereabouts of the passengers.

Shay and his gang force their hostages to walk to a very remote hill area with a shack and a corral. The hostages are kept in the corral. When nightfall comes, the temperature drops and a strong wind starts blowing, which makes the conditions absolutely miserable.

This story starts well enough, but it suffers from some implausible plot elements. The way the story ends is especially problematic. Hostage stories are difficult to do with any measure of originality.

The cast for this episode is great. The hostages include Darren McGavin as he makes his first guest appearance on Gunsmoke as a gambler of some renown named Will Helmick. Everett Sloane, who was once part of Orson Welles' Mercury Players, makes his second and final Gunsmoke appearance as a railroad tycoon named Follansbee. Aneta Corsaut, who was most famous for her role as Helen Crump on The Andy Griffith Show, is Eleanor Starkey, a woman traveling to Denver with her young son.

Gerald S. O'Loughlin portrays the mastermind of the crime Grant Shay. This would not be the only time the careers of O'Loughlin and McGavin intersected, as O'Loughlin replaced McGavin in the 1970s television drama series The Rookies.

Val Avery and Noam Pitlik were both familiar television faces from the 1960s through the 1970s, and they both play outlaws in Shay's gang. Also look for the seemingly ever present Ted Jordan as one of the gang members. Of course, Jordan, who was one of James Arness's personal friends, would eventually join the cast of Gunsmoke as the recurring character Nathan Burke.

Clyde Ware wrote the script for this episode. He would go on to pen another hostage story in Season 11 in the episode appropriately titled "The Hostage," which also features Darren McGavin in a guest starring role.

Someone please tell Kitty not to take the stage. It always seems that something bad happens on her trip and in this episode nothing changes.

On her way back to Dodge after four weeks away, Kitty's stagecoach is held-up by Grant Shay and his gang. But what Shay is after is not loot but the people. He feels like he can ransom their lives and make a large profit.

On the stage with Kitty is Eleanor Starkey and her son, a gambler named Will Helmick, a railroad big-wig named Follansbee and young man named Johnny Hutton. All their lives will be turned upside down when they are hauled off the stage and made to walk up into the hills and held at gunpoint without shelter in a cattle corral.

Meanwhile back in Dodge, Matt has been itching for the stage to arrive. It been four weeks since he has seen Kitty and is worried about tardiness of the stage. When the stage arrives vacant of any people, Matt knows there is a problem. Festus and Matt set off to find out what happened.

The episode was fine right up till the ending. The ending seemed to have been written in haste as if they had no thought except to end the show. And for a entertaining plot the ending was just unbelievable. No fault on the acting but that one scene made the show appear to be for naught.

One reviewer said he thought they were preparing Darren McGavin for the Nightstalker series with this episode. I seriously doubt that as the Night Stalker movie was 7 years after this episode and the series was 9 years later.

When I saw director Mark Rydell's name on the opening credits, I was encouraged, since his recent work on "The Lady" was Class-A. But what a huge disappointment.

I HATE "Hostage" episodes...Kitty kidnapped, or Doc, Matt, Festus, etc; these shows are designed to manipulate us viewers in the worst way. We know that our heroes will be rescued in the end (usually about at the 48:00 mark), but the writers seem to delight in tormenting US along with the unfortunate onscreen captives, who are usually brutalized and abused, while we nervously wait for help to arrive. These are definitely what I would call "one-note" plots, and I can't stand to sit through them (even a fine film like "The Desperate Hours"). "20 Miles" has more than its share of cruelty and shock, which unfortunately would become the norm as Gunsmoke moved into the color era, and the producers would insist on more sensational, sadistic plot elements...to "keep up with the times", you understand.

Poor old Everett Sloane becomes the bad guy's punching bag, and the teenager (Tony Haig) is beaten savagely (twice) within an inch of his life (check out Haig's superb performance in Route 66's heartbreaking "Ten Drops of Water" from 1960).

Strong points: 1.) pretty cool to see TV icons Kolchak, Helen Crump, and Chief O'Hara all contained in a single stagecoach (even though you barely recognized Stafford Repp in the background, who only groans a couple of times). 2.) the relationship between McGavin and Miss Kitty, capped off by his very last "Miss Kitty". 3.) the superb villainy of Gerald McGloughlin, who nevertheless was dispatched FAR too easily at the end, cheating the viewer out of the satisfaction of real poetic justice.

But I digress.

The pathetically inept "big climax" we've all been waiting for, which looks haphazard in its scripting, direction and editing, is an INSULT to the viewers, who have been kept in torment for most of the show. This lame, slap-dash resolution lasts a mere 17 SECONDS onscreen (a total rip-off!) and features a poorly staged, split-second shot with Everett Sloane and the miraculously revived Tony Haig in the far background, apparently overpowering the bad guys. And we never see them again.

Also-- I deduct a full rating star because of the outrageous waste of time in the very opening, with the kid with buckshot/salt in his rump, which ate up almost TWO FULL MINUTES (!) of screen time that was desperately needed at the end. This is more than bad judgement; it's downright incompetent.

Observation: I noticed that IMDB "Photo Gallery" accompanying this episode includes 22 photos, 21 of which feature the two little boys in the show (some photos are nearly duplicates). I found that odd. Hopefully, it's a person who's a real-life acquaintance of one of the child actors. LR.