Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I grew up watching Paul Petersen (and Shelley Fabares) grow up under the wise tutelage of Donna Reed and her physician husband played by Carl Betz on “The Donna Reed Show.” I’m pretty sure that the demure but determined and competent Donna Stone, played by Reed never had occasion to ride a horse. Nor did she as the determined and competent prostitute Lorene in “From Here to Eternity” (1953), a performance for which she won an Oscar. I don’t think she had a blouse partly torn off her in other role, including the western she made a year after “Gun Fury” (1953), “Three Hours to Kill” in which she drove a buggy rather than riding in a saddle.

Anticipating the Budd Boetticher stripped-down westerns with Randolph Scott, “Gun Fury” has a woman in peril, Jennifer Ballard (Reed), a demure but not frail fiancée meeting her intended, Ben Warren, played by Rock Hudson, who was 9 inches taller than Reed, somewhere in Arizona north of Tucson. Ben, who put five years into fighting in the Union Army during the Civil War has had his fill of guns and force, but like Grace Kelly’s Quaker in the “prestige picture” western of the year before, “High Noon,” will take up arms when a Confederate soldier, Frank Slayton (Phil Carey) whose war has not ended robs the coach, leaves Ben for dead, and takes Jennifer for himself.

Though Jennifer makes no complaints and does not slow the robbers down as they head south, Jess Burgess (Leo Gordon), who is increasingly unhappy with the rebels becoming plain bandits, and Blinky (Lee Marvin, who makes an impression, but does not provide indications of future stardom) want to leave her behind (my title quotes him). Slayton’s Mexican spitfire (that’s the clichéd role Roberta Haynes plays) is furious (and vindictive) that Slayton has replaced her.

En route, Slayton tied Jess to a fence. After Ben awakens, he sees the vultures circling and unties Jess. They join forces to go after Slayton and his remaining six henchmen.

The movie has a lot of riding through picturesque scenery (around Sedona, AZ). There was much that was formulaic (though my sense of the formulae is partly shaped by later westerns, particularly those Boetticher/Scott ones), including the rivalry between the bad guys and the resiliency and monomania of the hero.

Something of a surprise is that Ben’s hunt for Slayton (and his fiancée) is joined by an Indian  called Billy (Post Park) whose sister Slayton killed. Billy Whiskers first tries to kill Jess, but then joins Jess and Ben. (Another echo of “High Noon” is the unwillingness of anyone in two small towns to join a posse to pursue the Slayton gang). There is no condescension by the characters o the screenwriters to the Native man. Billy is a crack shot and also a skilled knifeman.

The movie was shot and shown in theaters in 3-D, which accounts for the high number of objects being hurled into the camera, though not, perhaps, for the amount of knife-wielding in a movie titled “Gun Fury.” Also the bitterness of Slayton and the stalking by Ben, Jess, and Billy is calculating — motivated, but not infuriated.

Though not having much specific with which to work, the actors acquit themselves well.


Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) made mostly unsentimental movies, with the exception of “The Strawberry Blonde” (1941) starring Olivia de Haviland, Rita Hayworth, and James Cagney. Well, I guess there is a sentimental angle in “High Sierra” and “They Died with Their Boots On” (both 1941) and the very twisted sentimentality of the psychotic character James Cagney played in “White Heat” 1949), Walsh’s most revered film. (Walsh is credited with making John Wayne a star  in “The Big Trail” (1930), and advanced Humphrey Bogart’s career to where he broke through to superstardom in “The Maltese Falcon” (1941, directed by John Huston)  in “They Drive by Night” (1940) and “High Sierra” (1941). (Walsh also directed Errol Flynn in one of Flynn's favorite movies “Gentleman Jim” (1942)).

Recommended: Yes