Simply Perfect

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Like Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter Glenn Ford in Day Of The Evil Gun is a gunfighter who deserted his wife and two daughters and has now come home. But on arrival discovers that they've been taken by the Apaches and he sets off to find them.Unlike Peck's wife though, Barbara Babcock has grown inpatient for her man and has given up. She's taken up with her neighbor Arthur Kennedy who declares himself in on the hunt. These two form one uneasy alliance.But they have to stay allied because they do come across a whole lot of low lifes on their journey into Apache country. On the way there they come into a charming, but coldblooded Mexican bandit in Nico Minardos, a cholera epidemic in a town with an avaricious store owner in James Griffith and some army deserters who are an outlaw gang with John Anderson in charge.During all this time Kennedy who has lorded his moral superiority over Ford develops into quite a killing machine himself. Makes for an interesting climax.In his recent biography of his father, Peter Ford who played one of the army deserters said that this was one cursed production. Some kind of malady was going around in Durango, Mexico where the film was shot and everyone in the cast came down. The most serious was Dean Jagger who nearly died. Jagger has only one scene in the film, but he plays an itinerant peddler who pretends he's crazy so that the Apaches will deal with him. He looked somewhat ravaged in his appearance. The malady whatever it was also affected the crew on Guns For San Sebastian shooting at the same time.Peter Ford who played one of the army deserters also said his father was pleased to be working with Arthur Kennedy again, they had been together on one of Ford's best films Trial. Day Of The Evil Gun is a competently made western does drag a bit in spots. Still fans of the horse opera and Glenn Ford should like it.

A watchable flick with decent performances by the leads and supporting cast, using some striking desert photography from Durango as background. Ford is a tired gunfighter who returns home to find his wife and two children kidnapped by Apaches. Kennedy is his rival who claims that she was just about to marry him.The mismatched pair team up to retrieve Ford's family, but it's allmighty hard a-trackin' them through this here desert. Along the way they must pry information out of a handful of truculent witnesses, natural challenges, and assorted miscreants. The first group includes Dean Jagger as a filthy, mentally challenged desert dweller. The second set includes cholera and vultures. The third includes a group of self-styled renegade deserters from the Army.Ford is forceful enough but burned out from the mayhem he's created in the past. Kennedy is by far the more ruthless of the two.In the end they manage to reach the Apache camp and escape with the prisoners, but a cathartic showdown between Ford and Kennedy is unavoidable. Our sensibilities demand that Kennedy die. (I wonder why? Our ostensible hero, Glen Ford, the man we admire so much, wouldn't have demanded it, yet we in the audience wring our hands in expectation of seeing Kennedy shot full of holes.) At the climactic moment, Kennedy turns into not merely a brutal man but a conniving and cowardly murderer, which he has not been before, in order to justify his killing. It's an "evil gun," as the storekeeper comments, but it's a bullet from that gun that satisfies the viewers. Some might call it hypocrisy, since the ending violates the principles that the movie itself has been preaching all along, but I'd just put it in the "commercial interests" basket and let it go, just another movie that rejects violence except when doing so would lead to less pelf.Sorry. Carried away there. Will someone help me down from this soap box? Thank you. Thank you very much.Ford is his usual cool and savvy Westerner, wearing his usual small-brimmed hat, and is outfitted in earth colors suggestive of nature. Kennedy is always in a black hat and dirty shirt. Dean Jagger is absolutely FILTHY. I suppose there's no water in the desert, just plenty Alacron de Durango.The Apaches are treated reasonably for a Western. They are human enough to retrieve their dead and hold funeral ceremonies. They may violate our laws by kidnapping -- kidnapping and adoption and such things were traditionally acceptable -- but they're neither treacherous no inherently evil. Not like that gun.

Not bad little western starring Glenn Ford as Lorne Warfield, a gunfighter who has had his belly-full of killing and just wishes to carve out a new life with his wife and two daughters. When he finds they have been kidnapped by Apaches, Warfield will have quite a few obstacles in his path before he can rescue them. Arthur Kennedy has the best role of the film as Owen Forbes, a man in love with Warfield's wife and resents the man for walking out on his family. Forbes is slowly growing accustomed to killing as many will die by his gun along the way. Warfield is always looking over his shoulder in regards to Forbes but will have to form a partnership with him in order to somehow survive an accompaniment of ordeals along the way such as Army deserters wishing to make a trade with those Apaches who have kidnapped Warfield's family. They'll have to contend with Mexicans, also.The film is excellently photographed by cinematographer W Wallace Kelley, especially many numerous long shots which really open wide the hot desert landscape Warfield must ride(..and walk)along the way. But Kelley's marvelous camera-work during the Apache attack on the small town filled with betrayed Army deserters led by John Anderson's Jefferson Addis, is wonderful to behold. Probably my favorite sequence is when Warfield and Forbes have been tied up to be meat for the buzzards as we watch and wonder in horror how they'll ever escape this ordeal. When you have Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy as your leads, a film would be hard to dislike. This one does have a rather routine plot, but as I mention above the cast and photography is first-rate.

Make movie available on DVD as you can't buy this excellent movie on any format. Anyone who likes westerns should not miss this one. The psychological roles that Ford and Kennedy play make this movie definitely different and spellbinding for the viewer. What's interesting about this movie is the apparent role changes that take place between Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy. They switch from Ford as a reforming gunslinger to Kennedy a mild family man turning the opposite direction. The movie lived up to my expectations of both actors. I missed this movie when it was first released in 1968 and can not find it available in any format. So far, catch it on TV if you can in your area.