Dull
In 1961 producer Robert E Kent put together two low-budget Westerns released by United Artists and starring James Brown: Gun Fight, released in May, and Gun Street, which came out in November. Gun Street will be our next review. Bet you can’t wait.
I’m sorry to tell you right away that neither is very good. They are distinctly modest black & white affairs, cheaply staged with interior sets that a local amateur dramatics troupe might have been satisfied with and unconvincing studio ‘exteriors’ that remind us of those old 1940s programmers. There are plastic logs and fake snow. The writing and acting is also plodding and ponderous.
Kent was a prolific writer and producer of B-movies of all kinds and was involved in one way or another in a good number of Westerns. To be fair, there were some reasonably good ones among them, such as Utah Blaine, the screenplay of which he wrote from a Louis L’Amour novel, and he worked a good deal with George Montgomery on his less-than-brilliant but nevertheless solid oaters. But he also wrote and produced some clunkers, and I fear Gun Fight and Gun Street will both be found in the Clunker rack in DVD stores.
Both were directed by Edward L Cahn (left). Cahn, born 1899, had been in movies since 1917, was a Universal editor and started directing in the early 30s. He became something of a cult figure in the 50s when he turned his attention to trendy teenage rebellion films and schlock science-fiction (with a special penchant for zombies). He didn’t direct a great number of Westerns in his long career but he started very well, with the 1932 Law and Order, the one with Walter Huston and Harry Carey, though it did rather go downhill from there. He never did a Western as good as that again and we certainly don’t count Cahn among the élite of Western directors. These two 1961 Kent B-Westerns were his last as director.
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Gun Fight was written by Gerald Drayson Adams, so really the screenplay should have been better. But much of it is lurid melodrama. There’s a very vague attempt at a Cain-and-Abel theme but as Cain doesn’t kill Abel it doesn’t really come off.
Both pictures were photographed by Walter Stenge, later to become President of the ASC. Unfortunately, there is so little location shooting and the studio sets are so basic that Stenge hardly got a chance to shine. You get the impression that such shots of Wyoming as there are were intercut from footage of other movies.
If I had to choose, I’d go for Gun Fight over Gun Street, but to be brutally frank (and when, dear e-pards, am I anything else?), they both pretty well suck. Oh, that’s unkind. Let’s say they aren’t terribly good.
One Response
Hard to believe that the same Edward L Cahn had directed the excellent Law and Order close to 30 years before Gun Fight. What happened to him !?…
This Gun Fight could have – and looks like – it has been shot in the 1930s, looking like a early talkies serial in many ways. Some actors, including Gregg Palmer, even play like in a silent movie by rolling their eyes. Brown does not roll anything at all… Funny to know that Brown, the younger brother, was in fact born in 1920 and Palmer in 1927. The enemy brothers, one good and one bad, who may reconcile (or not) at the end, is a classic western trope.
The whole thing is closer to a cheap western TV episode. But you would have better watching Rin Tin Tin instead!