Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

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

discount1957 An above-average Lyles Western that gently eases its ageing cast through an intriguing plot. Andrews is the marshal and Russell, as boisterous as ever, the owner of the gin palace he comes to visit. However, on his arrival with Drake, he discovers that law and order in Stone Junction is lynch law and that the town is ruled by Bettger. The film is well scripted - indeed this is the best screenplay of all Lyle's Westerns - and imaginatively directed by Springsteen, especially at the climax where a bunch of Indians all but tear down Stone Junction. This is a pleasant actioner.Phil Hardy

35541m This film is poor even by the standards of an AC Lyles 'old geezer' western. Audiences back when this was released must have realised that it was bottom of the barrel schlock and laughed throughout. Anachronistic songs and music, old rheumatic actors in need of doubles, pathetic choreography; anyone seeing this in 1966 must have felt that they had gone through a timewarp and re-emerged in the 1950s.The highlight has to be the saloon fight between Dana Andrews and Lyle Bettger or, rather, the fight between their stunt doubles since the faces of the stuntmen are visible throughout and Bettger's has a different hair colour. I also laughed out loud when a rubber dummy was catapaulted into the air after an explosion and when a character was all smiles about 10 seconds after being told that her father was dead.RG Springsteen was a hack but had directed a relatively competent film (Bullet for a Badman) only a little while previously so it is not clear why, other than cheap budget and rushed shooting schedule, he is so slapdash here. Note also that Andrews' ride to Jane Russell's house is conveyed by using footage recycled from earlier in the film.

bkoganbing How ironic if Tom Drake and his brother hadn't fired on U.S. Marshal Dana Andrews one of them wouldn't have wound up dead and we would have had no film called Johnny Reno.Dana Andrews plays the title role and he's drawn into a nasty local situation when that ambush happens. He brings Drake back to town to stand trial, but finds the town in a strange mood. They literally genuflect when their Mayor Lyle Bettger gives an order. Bettger really did not want to see Drake again.Drake's accused of killing the son of a nearby Kiowa chief. That in it self is strange, why is Bettger and the town all worried about the death of an Indian which Drake protests he never did? Turns out there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.A.C. Lyles once again provides work for several players of the forties and fifties who unless they were doing television found work increasingly hard to get. Jane Russell reprises one of her tough as nails, heart of gold women she took out a patent on. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays the part of an over the hill sheriff, very similar to what he did in High Noon. He does show why Gary Cooper did not want him backing him up in that.Lyle Bettger adds another to his collection of twisted psychos he did like no one else could in the fifties. Richard Arlen and John Agar have decent size roles in this as well.Not a great western, but thank you A.C. for bringing all of this cast together.

frankfob Another in producer A.C. Lyles' string of geezer westerns. This time, instead of just producing the picture, Lyles decided to try his hand at writing it. Bad move. The scripts on this series of westerns were never particularly good in the first place, and many of them were written by Steve Fisher, who also wrote this one. His teaming up with Lyles doesn't seem to have improved things any, and actually this particular entry is a bit more rambling and disconnected than the usual Lyles western. Although it's full of old and familiar faces, and worth a look maybe for that value alone, the picture itself isn't very good at all. Slow as molasses, it seems to be afflicted with the same arthritis that many of its principals probably had. Making an action picture with a cast whose youngest member is in his late 50s wasn't a real good idea. This isn't a real good movie. Skip it.