Day of the Evil Gun (1968)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

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

Day of the Evil Gun (1968) is an enjoyable pulp western with two over the hill actors in the lead. Glenn Ford became a star in the forties and fifties with Film Noirs like Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953), westerns such as 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) and with the classic social drama The Blackboard Jungle (1955). Arthur Kennedy had built up an image of sympathetic bad guy in westerns like Rancho Notorious (1952) and The Man From Laramie (1955) and in drama's like The Lusty Men (1952) and Some Came Running (1958).The plot of Day of the Evil Gun is a variation on The Searchers. Glenn Ford is looking for his kidnapped wife and his two children. He gets unwanted help from the lover of his wife, played by Arthur Kennedy. On their search they meet some colorful characters, all played by some of the best standard supporting actors Hollywood had to offer in that period: Dean Jagger, John Anderson, Royal Dano, Nico Minardos and a very young Harry Dean Stanton. The search and the finding of his wife and children become less interesting as the film progresses. The relationship between the two leads and the characters they encounter are far more compelling.The story was written by two veteran TV writers: Charles Marquis Warren and Eric Bercovici. The screenplay may be formulaic, but they provided an efficient story-line with lively characters and enough surprises to keep it entertaining all the way.Glenn Ford would continue to act until the early '90 in films and TV. After Day of the Evil Gun he still managed to participate in one classic, the very first big budget comic book epic: Superman (1978). He was excellent and is still the most memorable film interpretation of Jonathan Kent, Superman's adopted earth father. Despite the fact that he had only about two scenes. Arthur Kennedy would also keep on working until his death in 1990, but nothing memorable.Day of the Evil Gun may not belong in the section of the great classic westerns, but fans should check it out because it contains some good set pieces, especially the vulture scene. Day of the Evil Gun was released in the period when the Italian westerns were dominating the box office in Europe. These spaghetti-westerns were light years ahead when it came to violence, nihilism and memorable set pieces. But Hollywood had not caught up yet. Soon however the American classic westerns and action films would be replaced by spaghetti westerns imitations.

An offbeat ,almost dusky western ,with two veterans of the genre ,Arthur Kennedy and Glenn Ford ,both at their best and giving their characters substance :who is really the"hero"?Even when the movie is over ,you will not know..The subject is well known and was often treated in the past notably by John Ford : rescuing women captured by the Indians ,but the script is bizarre,including scenes which you would not expect ,which makes the two men's adventures an odyssey in miniature :the prisoners ,tied under the blistering sun ,and the birds of prey which gather à la Hitchcock's "the birds";the town where cholera is rampant;the pacifist man who does not understand why one can murder his fellow man.Not very plausible (particularly the final stampede ) ,most likely a fable with an ambiguous "moral".

It is not credited as such but this is essentially a retread of The Searchers ,and the two movies share a common plot -the hunt for relatives stolen by Indians Glenn Ford plays a noted gunman trying to turn his back on his former violent profession and who joins his neighbour ,Arthur Kennedy ,in the hunt for Kennedy's wife and two children who have been taken by Apaches.Complicating the matter is the fact that both men are in love with the woman in question. They are helped in their quest by a demented Indian trader -played by Dean Jagger in a way that seems to be a conscious tip of the hat to Hank Worden's performance in a similar role in The Searchers .The mission proves a fraught one -they are tortured by bandits ,encounter renegades and endure Indian raids en route to finding the people they seek The men undergo personality changes as the trek unfolds ,with the previously peaceable Kennedy displaying a new found relish for the killing fields and events build to a personal confrontation between the two men Performances are superlative ,the script by Charles Marquis Warren and Eric Bercovi is pointed and candid .Jerry Thorpe directs capably if somewhat anonymously This was designed for TV but wisely was given a cinema release .I urge all western lovers to see it

I like Glen FORD and consider this western a minor classic. Pretty unknown and still waiting to be recognized even by movie buffs this little gem has definitely not yet the reputation it deserves."Directed with lazy assurance" as the TIME OUT FILM GUIDE correctly writes, by veteran director Jerry Thorpe, and played with laid back gusto by all involved, this western offers a very grim and dark view on the "old west", more influenced by the Italo-western (which was in full bloom in the later 60ies) than the classic US-flick. Gunfighter FORD, aged, bored, tired and with "have-seen-it-all" eyes, comes back home just to find his wife and 2 small daughter carried away by Apaches. Arthur KENNEDY claims his wife was about to marry him and after an incredibly tough fist-fight they team up (unwillingly) to rescue them.What follows is an odyssey through some very bizarre situations, staged with the aforementioned lazy assurance, situations, which one does not happen to see in many other US-western: everything is dark, depressing, cynical and void of any sympathy. Whereas THE SEARCHERS had some hope underneath, this is more than 10 years later and the characters, scripted by veteran scriptwriter Charles Marquis Warren, are driven by the urge to do what has to be done, but equipped with little hope. FORD plays the "lost character" in an old west with dark cynical humor, one of his best later performances. Kennedy is fine, too, and also very worth mentioning is the character played by Nico Minardos, whom you would more expect to find in any Quentin Tarantino movie than in a B-western from the later 60ies. Great rough music by Jeff Alexander! All in all a very watchable outing, made by experts, each of whom must have had a dozen or more western to his credit at the time, when they teamed up to put DAY OF THE EVIL GUN on celluloid.Watch out for this and don't miss it, it's very well worth a viewing !