Blaise Starrett is a rancher at odds with homesteaders when outlaws hold up the small town. The outlaws are held in check only by their notorious leader, but he is diagnosed with a fatal wound and the town is a powder keg waiting to blow.
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Wuchak
8
By Wuchak
_**Robert Ryan and Ginger stuck in a snowy mountain town beleaguered by rogues**_
A tough cattleman (Robert Ryan) in bleak Bitters, Wyoming, is willing to use deadly force to stop a rancher (Alan Marshal) who’s fencing-in the area, but a band of rogue cavalry men led by Capt. Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) interrupt their quarrel. Tina Louise plays the rancher’s wife, Venetia Stevenson a girl in the town and David Nelson a reasonable member of the gang.
“Day of the Outlaw” (1959) is a B&W psychological Western shot in the Oregon Cascades. It’s similar to Westerns from the same period by Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, not to mention just as good or better. The protagonist (Ryan) isn’t a hero, but rather a tortured man ready to make a last stand; meanwhile Bruhn (Ives) isn’t wholly corrupted and still has some sense of nobility. Several of his hardened men, however, have clearly crossed over into the dark side.
Tina Louise, who would play Ginger from Gilligan’s Island in 5-6 years, is younger & cuter here while Venetia Stevenson is nimble and winsome. You might remember Venetia from her jaw-dropping role in “The City of the Dead,” aka “Horror Hotel” (1960).
Director Andre DeToth was having personal problems at the time of shooting and it affected the mood of the set, plus there were other issues, like snowstorm delays, Ryan missing a week due to pneumonia and DeToth changing his mind about scene locations at the last minute, etc. Perhaps the biggest problem was that the budget was low and, when they ran out of finances, DeToth & crew just packed-up and went back to Los Angeles.
Producers & editors had to make do with what was shot, which explains some weaknesses here and there. Scriptwriter Philip Yordan lamented “what could have been.”
The movie runs 1 hour, 32 minutes, and was shot in central Oregon at Dutchman Flat & Todd Lake Meadows about 20 miles east of the town of Bend in late November thru early December, 1958.
GRADE: B+/A-
