This really isn't such a bad movie. A solid cast makes it more entertaining than it might have been otherwise. It just has a "throw away" sort of quality because, for a movie that's supposed to a mystery-Western, it's quite easy to predict. Also, it can't overcome the hilarious miscasting of Roddy McDowall, who can't quite suppress his English accent.

It's essentially an Agatha Christie sort of deal: during a card game, a man is caught cheating, and the players impulsively decide not just to punish the cheat, but to hang him. Soon after, these same men die mysteriously. A gambler named Van Morgan (Dean Martin) who'd tried to prevent the hanging knows that he could still be on the hit list. Soon, a gun toting stranger, Jonathan Rudd (Robert Mitchum), comes to town to preach.

This is worth sticking with for some things. First of all, both Martin and Mitchum exude their trademark cool. Mitchum, doing a variation on his role in "The Night of the Hunter", is especially amusing. Second, a young Yaphet Kotto gets a rather good role as the bartender in one of two competing saloons. Third, there are some very lovely ladies in the cast, Inger Stevens as Lily Langford, and Katherine Justice as Nora Evers. Finally, there's a first rate assortment of character actors on display: John Anderson, Denver Pyle, Whit Bissell, Ted de Corsia, and Roy Jenson.

McDowall, cast as Pyles' son, manages to be pretty good at playing a worthless weasel sort of man, but he simply looks too out of place here.

The theme song crooned by Dino may not be one of his best, but it *is* kind of catchy.

Six out of 10.

Probably wouldn't have stuck with this one if I didn't know Robert Mitchum was showing up eventually but it ended up getting a lot better as it went on. The plot was interesting and I liked the way they didn't reveal the killer in a sensational twist seeing as most people would have worked it out by then. A good example of suspense being better than surprise.

That being said the structure of the film was a bit loose, It spent a lot of time on things that didn't really have any importance to the story when I thought it could have spent more time establishing certain characters motivations and relationships and I thought sometimes the snappy style dialog was a bit stilted. Some of the acting was also a bit awkward. It was only about a third to about a half way through the movie that I decided I liked it but in the end it was quite enjoyable and once again Mitchum was awesome

The corrosion of any sort of quality in the screenwriting of recent decades makes tight plotting a surprise wherever one finds it. Here it is. The ongoing verbal duel between Martin and Mitchum is Shakespeare compared to the posturing of recent tough-guy flicks. Also see Martin's acting in "Rio Bravo" to find significant talent in an often-overlooked comic actor.