Movies:
Forty Guns
DVD Release
- Release Date: 2005
- Rating:
- Genre: Western
- Movie Type: Psychological Western
- Themes: Taming the West, Sheriffs and Outlaws
- Director: Samuel Fuller
- Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Dean Jagger, John Ericson, Gene Barry
- Release Year: 1957
- Country: US
- Run Time: 80 minutes
Plot
Cult hero Samuel Fuller wrote and directed this visually inventive western, which didn't fare well with American audiences but earned a potent reputation with European cineastes. Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) is a despotic landowner who, with a posse of hired guns, has made herself the law of Cochise County, Arizona, with the weak-willed sheriff Ned Logan (Dean Jagger) knuckling under to her demands. One day, Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan), a one-time gunfighter turned United States Marshall, arrives with his brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix) to restore democratic law and order to Cochise County. Griff soon tangles with Drummond's brother Brockie (John Ericson), though Jessica is attracted to the new lawman, and Griff finds love with female gunsmith Louvenia Spangler (Eve Brent). Griff and Louvenia marry, but on their wedding day, Brockie murders Wes, and Griff, who takes pride in the fact that he has never fired his gun since becoming a marshal, must now break his vow of non-violence. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie GuideReview
From its opening scene of Jessica Drummond's (Barbra Stanwyck) forty mounted henchmen thundering across the western landscape to the decidedly unconventional gunfight that concludes it, Forty Guns is a Samuel Fuller film all the way. Never content to respect the laws of a genre, Fuller pumps his yarn full of borderline corny melodrama and blatant sexual innuendo ("Are you still interested in my gun," Barry Sullivan's Griff asks Jessica as they snuggle in an abandoned cabin. And that's just one of many examples.) Like Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar, Forty Guns uses the Western as a vehicle for the maverick artistic impulses of its one-of-a-kind director. One of only two Westerns directed by Fuller (the other was his even more bizarre debut feature I Shot Jesse James, which went so far as to imply a dysfunctional homoerotic relationship between James and his assassin, Robert Ford), Forty Guns is, like many of his films, a strange cross between a guilty pleasure and a great piece of cinematic art. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie GuideCast
- Barbara Stanwyck - Jessica Drummond
- Barry Sullivan - Griff Bonnell
- Dean Jagger - Ned Logan
- John Ericson - Brockie Drummond
- Gene Barry - Wes Bonnell
Robert Dix - Chico Bonnell; Eve Brent - Louvenia Spangler; Jack "Judge" Carroll - Bamey Cashman; Paul Dubov - Judge Macey; Chuck Hayward - Charlie Savage; Gerald Milton - Shotgun Spangler; Neyle Morrow - Wiley; Eddie Parks - Sexton; Chuck Roberson - Howard Swain; Ziva Rodann - Rio; Hank Worden - John Chisum; Sandra Wirth - Chico's Girl
