Audie Murphy's career was winding down by 1966. Like many a veteran western star in the sixties, he went to Europe for a paycheck. This one is a hybrid remake of the 1948 Allied Artists sepia Rod Cameron programmer, Panhandle, with the same screenplay and even director, Lesley Selander, but filmed in Spain with a Euro supporting cast. The result I found a slight improvement over the original due to the color and widescreen plus a superior score and main cast.
The stale plot has an outlaw hiding in Mexico returning to the states to hunt down the murderer of his brother. This plot would have been moldy back in the William S Hart era.
Rod Cameron was a fine western lead, but Murphy is the slightly more expressive of the two stoic actors. The two feminine roles are close to a wash, with the voluptuous Diana Lorys giving the edge to the remake.
The biggest improvement is the villains. Reed Hadley looked the part of a western villain, but never projected much personality or menace. His career is mainly remembered for his stentorian narrator turns. A young Blake Edwards was out of place as a trigger-happy punk gunslinger. In this remake Broderick Crawford was aging and going to fat, but even past prime made a more threatening boss villain than Hadley. Euro vet Aldo Sambrell was every inch the vicious henchman and a big improvement over Edwards.
Despite using the same screenplay as the 1948 original, with only a few needed tweaks, this one really doesn't seem that out of the channel of Euro westerns of the time, which also often depended on revenge plots.
For me, a decent programmer western which should appeal mainly to Audie Murphy fans. For those not that much into westerns, this one is at best of borderline interest.
The stale plot has an outlaw hiding in Mexico returning to the states to hunt down the murderer of his brother. This plot would have been moldy back in the William S Hart era.
Rod Cameron was a fine western lead, but Murphy is the slightly more expressive of the two stoic actors. The two feminine roles are close to a wash, with the voluptuous Diana Lorys giving the edge to the remake.
The biggest improvement is the villains. Reed Hadley looked the part of a western villain, but never projected much personality or menace. His career is mainly remembered for his stentorian narrator turns. A young Blake Edwards was out of place as a trigger-happy punk gunslinger. In this remake Broderick Crawford was aging and going to fat, but even past prime made a more threatening boss villain than Hadley. Euro vet Aldo Sambrell was every inch the vicious henchman and a big improvement over Edwards.
Despite using the same screenplay as the 1948 original, with only a few needed tweaks, this one really doesn't seem that out of the channel of Euro westerns of the time, which also often depended on revenge plots.
For me, a decent programmer western which should appeal mainly to Audie Murphy fans. For those not that much into westerns, this one is at best of borderline interest.