A Lawless Street (1955)

People are voting emotionally.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

not a very bad western......predictable.....but fun to see Randolph Scott practically always in a good humour and looking good for his advancing age. the action is alright and the actors do their jobs....but i don't get Angela lansbury. in all her roles she ruins the movie for me I'm sorry but she doesn't pull my heart strings at all. yes luckily randy was in this film because i don't think i would have reached the end. i have 4 more Scott westerns to watch i hope they fare better than this one and Angela is not co starring or even a character actress. oh i forgot the atmosphere of the movie really passes well and the town is well depicted. maybe a few known character actors....gabby Hayes...Andy devine...Walter Brennan would have helped it get better

This is really no lesser an achievement than the renowned Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher Westerns; then again, director Lewis was no slouch (for he made his fair share of minor classics)! Scott's role is typical – a legendary marshal involved in a HIGH NOON (1952)-type situation, where he's practically left alone to clean up a town riddled with corruption and violence – but the underrated actor invests it with warmth, humor, tenacity and a quiet dignity. The star, then, is supported by a most excellent cast: Angela Lansbury (a fine actress but a rather unlikely chanteuse), James Bell (a usurped town leader), Jean Parker (an ageing belle and the latter's wife), Wallace Ford (predictably in the role of the reliable town doctor), Ruth Donnelly (as Scott's gracious elderly housekeeper), Jeanette Nolan (as the wife of a revenge-seeking ex-con whom Scott has killed in self-defense), and an interesting trio of villains – powerful boss Warner Anderson (who also fancies himself a ladies' man and, in fact, strikes up relationships with both Parker and Lansbury throughout), shifty but nervous gambler John Emery and smooth gunslinger Michael Pate (making for a worthy opponent to Scott).The above-average script by Kenneth Gamet (an in-joke shows the calendar in the hero's room as being sponsored by Gamet's Vegetable Compound!) gives characterization reasonable depth: Scott and Lansbury are married but she had left him because of his dangerous job (a situation which she has to live through again now); Scott tells Donnelly that he hears The Beast (which symbolizes the scourge of the town) every morning until it's replaced by church-bells at the end of the picture. The highlights – most of the action seems to take place in and around one particular saloon, though in a montage we're shown that Anderson's 'protection' extends to many others in town – include an energetic and brutal fistfight between the hero and a dim-witted giant (who subsequently joins forces with him), an astonishing shoot-out two-thirds of the way involving Scott and Pate which ends with the former left for dead, and the splendid extended climax. On top of it all is the pleasing cinematography by an expert in color lensing, Ray Rennahan.

This is the title of the German version translated into English. That is the way in the sixties German audience could have been attracted to a western movie. This is for me in some respects an outstanding western. I would like to explain why. American western movies are often not very realistic . I give you some examples: 1. heroic main characters are often good looking, handsome (which is not really what disturbs me) and know how to use a gun or knife 2. the characters are mostly simple, straight-forward, there is the good and there is the evil 3. the movies make us believe that the wild west bustled with a few reasonable and righteous people and astonishingly out of 200 adult inhabitants of a town, 190 are cowards or villains or lynchers and of course miserable people or everything altogether which one could find in the gutter of humankind (outside town the rate is a little more favourable)- something I cannot believe,because I do not want to believe, that we Europeans only sent the sludge of our civilization over the ocean. 4.as for shooting! Shootings in American western movies! A world in itself. I wonder whether writers, directors are aware that this is always the most unrealistic part in their films. In every western movie you see somebody shooting with an old muzzle loader 5 miles and kick the rider from the horse; in every movie you see cowboys shooting from the hip, without aiming on a silver dollar thrown into the air, you guess, they hit, not to speak that villains do not get their opponents although they fire from close distance, let us say 20 centimeters, hundreds of broadsides, while the sheriff is shooting back with one single shot between the eyes of the five bandits. This reminds me to war films, where the American guys are outnumbered by their enemies who have a tremendous arsenal of weapons which turn out to be completely useless whereas the American guy swiftly (and heroically) kills with his Colt a whole batallion. What is this nonsense for? Life is not like High Noon. But sometimes it is good to believe it, right? I stop the list here to come to the "man like a devil". What an incredible scene! The sheriff has a shootout with the villain and what happens? I could hardly believe my eyes. The sheriff is felled - although not deadly. The gangster prevails! When it comes to the second shooting the sheriff is clever enough not to risk a fair duel.Right so! That is something I can take. Can You remember the scene where Rob Roy desperately holds the sabre of the opponent who is going to kill him in the next moment with his bare hand?! The big man has no chance in the fair fight against the small but capable adversary, but he has a helping idea. That is how you have to go against the rat pack of this world, which is often more powerful, more skilled. This western movie has some astonishing aspects and therefore I honour him with 8 asterics. By the way Randolph Scott is in his western movies always already a senior. It is the same in true life. Do not expect too much from the youngsters,usually they wet their trousers in difficult situations!

Randolph Scott is the town marshal like Gary Cooper in High Noon. Only instead of four guys coming to town to kill the marshal because of an old grudge, here we have a trio of villains, Warner Anderson, John Emery, and Michael Pate. The first two have been hiring folks to do in Scott because they want a wide open and lawless town for the saloon business. They've finally settled on Pate who does beat Scott to the draw and folks think he's been killed. Warner Anderson is a particularly smarmy villain. He's got designs on Angela Lansbury who's a touring musical performer in town for a few performances. He's also been romancing the wife of the biggest rancher in the area played by Jean Parker and he says openly that it was only for his own amusement. That remark costs him dear in the movie later on.Scott has a particularly brutal fight scene with Don Megowan who's the brother of a man Scott kills in the first 15 minutes of the film. Ranks up there with his classic brawls with John Wayne in The Spoilers and Pittsburgh. I remember a Gunsmoke episode years ago where this particular plot line was used. Someone beats Matt Dillon to the draw and Doc Adams pretends he's dead and in the meantime works furiously to save his life. Here that role is taken by town doctor Wallace Ford. Both Randolph Scott and James Arness live to best the villain, but the story is how in both cases and I won't say more.A good cast of veteran Hollywood performers makes A Lawless Street a pleasure to watch. And Angela Lansbury has a musical number. What's better than that?