Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

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

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Michael O'Keefe Well followed Samuel Fuller writes and directs this borderline corny sagebrush melodrama. Very apt cast with dialogue a bit sappy, but not without sexual innuendo. Barbara Stanwyck plays Jessica Drummond, a prominent landowner, with her own posse of forty hired henchmen and a theme song. (Really). With a milquetoast sheriff, Ned Logan(Dean Jagger), Drummond has made herself the law of Cochise County, Arizona. The sheriff and whole town knuckles under to her whims and demands as they thunder through the territory. A former gunslinger turned United States Marshall, Griff Bonnell(Barry Sullivan)rides into town with two of his brothers to restore law and order. Jessica becomes smitten with the new lawman, all the while he has eyes for an attractive young female gunsmith(Eve Brent).In a scene where Drummond is to be dragged down the middle of the street behind a horse, a stunt woman refuses. Miss Stanwyck, in her mid 40's, did the scene herself suffering a few minor lacerations. Also featured: John Ericson, Gene Barry, Robert Dix, Sandra Wirth and Chuck Roberson.

bletcherstonerson This movie is a bizarre western that works, filmed like a Gothic horror film, it sets a pace for action that is brisk and unapologetic. The cavalier personalities of the main characters seem like an odd fit with the rest of the brooding characters. Dean Jagger gives a fine performance as the love struck dupe who thinks that a way to Stanwyck's heart is by being a groveling yes man and cuckold. A friend told me that the intent was to make Stanwyck's brother, her illegitimate son, and I think the strangeness of their relationship would have been less creepy had it been written that way. The way it stands there is a bit of over the top emotional attachment that is on the fringe of a husband and wife relationship.That being said, the scene where Stanwyck's is at the burnt remnants of her childhood home is sheer artistry, and visually arresting. To sum it up, the sheer weirdness and bizarre dialogue, along with the writing of the story, added with some truly unexpected twists make this a film worth viewing.

dougdoepke Aided by her trigger-happy brother and a small army, a cattle queen owns the county including the sheriff. But there's trouble when a marshal arrives who has a trigger-happy brother of his own. Thus a load of complications ensue.Interesting, if not wholly successful, western. There's really too many principal characters and plot for the limited time frame (79-min's.). Nonetheless, director and screenwriter Fuller manage a few real surprises. Then too, this may be the "walkingest" horse opera I've seen – note how many tracking shots Fuller manages of people walking. This may be a budget consideration since little action occurs away from town. The forty guns are forty guys riding behind queen bee Jessica (Stanwyck) like a mounted army. Oddly, these guys never talk even after being dismissed from the extra-long dinner table, and soon disappear when Jessica's little empire crumbles. There are a lot of cross-currents to the highly involved plot line, so you may need the proverbial scorecard to keep up.Unsurprisingly, Stanwyck is imperious as the big cheese running both her ranch and the town, while Sullivan is appropriately steely-eyed as the town tamer. But give John Ericson (Brockie) an upside-down Oscar for the worst over-the-top mugging since The Three Stooges. At the same time, Jagger does well as the spineless Sheriff in the employ of queen bee Jessica. Fuller shows real style at times. He certainly knows how to subvert western cliché and keep audience interest. However, in my little book, this is not one of his better films, basically because of a crowded script and budgetary limitations. I mean a lot of money went into the name cast that perhaps had to be made up elsewhere as in the pedestrian settings. All in all, it's, a rather exotic if not exactly memorable western.

bkoganbing Long before she became the matriarch of The Big Valley, Barbara Stanwyck had two other roles as a prairie queen, the first was in The Violent Men and the second in this Samuel Fuller classic Forty Guns. The title refers to the number of riders, all of whom are handy with a six gun she has on the payroll to enforce her will.Coming to challenge that will is Barry Sullivan who is playing a Wyatt Earp like federal marshal complete with two brothers Gene Barry and Robert Dix. Stanwyck also has a brother, a really vicious punk played by John Ericson.Sullivan's in town to arrest one of Stanwyck's forty who decided to go out on his own and rob a mail coach. Any crime involving the US mail is stupid because it always brings in the Feds, then and now. That leads to a series of escalations and a few deaths among the cast members.Look for Dean Jagger's performance as a really sad sack and corrupt town marshal who is busy conniving against Sullivan and his brothers at every opportunity. But poor Jagger is also thinking with his male member as he's crushing out on Stanwyck as well. Note how Stanwyck responds to Sullivan who is her enemy on that score as opposed to Jagger who's ready to do all for her if she'll give him the time of day.Forty Guns is a nicely paced very much adult western with some nice double entendre lines neatly placed in the script. Barbara Stanwyck loved making westerns and this is a real good one.