Day of the Evil Gun

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The Plague: Warfield and Forbes arrive in a small frontier town where they are hoping to resupply, only to find it is gripped by a cholera outbreak. Day of the Evil Gun opened 27 Mar 1968 in Cincinnati, OH, as indicated by a 3 Apr 1968 Var box-office report. Openings followed in New York City on 24 Apr 1968, and in Los Angeles, CA, on 15 May 1968 to lukewarm critical notices. A 15 May 1968 LAT review stated that MGM was making little effort to promote the film. When questioned about this fact during an interview for the 13 Oct 1968 LAT, Glenn Ford was philosophical, comparing the movie business to gambling. 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.

If I were casting this film I think I would have reversed the roles of two of the supporting players. Royal Dano could usually be found playing less than savory characters, so seeing him here as a doctor treating cholera victims was a new one on me. I thought he would have been better suited to portray the part of the pretend crazy guy, Jimmy Noble. He had already taken on a similar role in a first season episode of 'The Rebel' TV series when he played a coward holed up in an abandoned fort, surviving only because Indians pay no mind to the mentally infirm. The title of that show was 'Yellow Hair' if you care to look it up. In any event, Dean Jagger acquitted himself well as the nutty Noble. 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.Day of the Evil Gun" is the sort of western you probably wouldn't have seen before the 1960s. This is because the film is filled with a lot of non-heroes...folks who are just scum and no nice guys like you'd have found in earlier movies. Again and again, the two anti- heroes meet up with folks who end up being pretty much awful people...a true late 60s sort of plot, that's for sure. s Day of the Evil Gun is a surprisingly good western, an exciting, credible and reasonably gritty tale that has often been likened to The Searchers. Glenn Ford's previous oater The Last Challenge is one of the worst films of its year. It was directed by MGM veteran workhorse Richard Thorpe. Curiously enough, Thorpe's son Jerry both produced and directed Evil Gun. Sawn-Off Shotgun: "Captain" Jefferson Addis' preferred weapon is a single barrel sawn-off shotgun. After killing him, Forbes takes the gun for himself. Talkative Loon: This is the act Jimmy Noble puts on as part of his Obfuscating Insanity: aimlessly rambling and randomly repeating and pluralizing certain words. He sets off to find them, accompanied by Owen Forbes (Arthur Kennedy), a well-to-do rancher who planned to marry Warfield’s wife — she was convinced he had been killed and would never return.

Warfield decides to go after his family with Forbes accompanying him. Warfield learns that the wife of Reverend Yeardley (Ross Elliot), Lydia (Pilat Pellicer) had also been abducted by the Apache but had been released. He goes to her but does not gain any useful information. Sheriff Kelso (Paul Fix) cautions Warfield about going into Apache territory. The men come to a small town where Forbes is able to convince a gun running storekeeper (James Griffith) to point the way. Next they are captured by a band of Apaches and taken to the camp of bandito Deleon (Nico Minardos). Warfield and Forbes are staked out in the sun to await the buzzards . They escape from Deleon when Warfield lets it be known that he has money buried somewhere. Deleon frees them but is overpowered by the men. Deleon is killed by Forbes when he attempts to overpower him. Day of the Evil Gun is a 1968 film Western starring Glenn Ford, Arthur Kennedy, and Dean Jagger. It was directed by Jerry Thorpe. Obfuscating Insanity: Indian trader Jimmy Noble feigns insanity as the Indians will not kill a crazy person.

Broadcasts

Day of the Evil Gun" is another Glenn Ford western in which he plays a "fast on the draw gunfighter". The theme is similar in nature to John Ford's "The Searchers" released two years earlier. Released in 1968, "Day of the Evil Gun" stars Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy as two older men pursuing the Apaches who kidnapped the wife and daughters of the former. The two are at odds because the latter wants to be the man of the family after the former skipped out and was thought dead. Unfortunately, the trail is two months cold and they run into numerous problems, like being staked out in the desert and being hindered by a curious group of remote soldiers. The McCalls are the other family. Patriarch Cyrus has one of the biggest ranches around. But someone has been rustling cattle from the Big Sky Ranch. And Cyrus decides barbed wire might be a way to stop the stealing, even if it inconveniences his neighbors.

W can certainly say that actor Glenn Ford enjoyed a lengthy, lucrative career. One of Hollywood's most bankable stars of the 1950s, he continued to work in the 1960s and early '70s based largely on his good relationships throughout the industry. By 1968 he may have been technically too old to continue in action roles, but carried them off nonetheless. When Hollywood continued to feature older actors in general fare, Ford was never an embarrassment.

There is no doubt that Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy are both A-lister film stars who excel in westerns. When you pit them against one another as they ride across the desert sands to rescue the same woman and two children that they both love who were captured by Apache Indians,the audience gets a tense action/drama/western film that is both entertaining as well as makes each viewer decide which of these two (2) men is deserving of the love and affection of the three (3) captured victims. Warfield and Forbes come upon seemingly simple minded peddler Jimmy Noble (Dean Jagger) whom Warfield gets to admit that it was he who brought Lydia Yeardley home. Warfield and Forbes simply do not get along but tolerate each other in the search. They grapple with each other but continue onward. That won’t be easy. They’ve been taken far into the hills to an Apache stronghold, perhaps to be killed as part of a sacred ritual. 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.