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As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is a 1974 made for TV film, a good old fashion western.Devlin (Steve Forrest) is a free thinking gun slinger who escapes the hangman's noose like Lazarus...sort of. He goes on to help the poor widow Gault (Sharon Acker) save her silver mine. That's about it. No twists. Cameron Mitchell plays the bad guy. "Slicker than bear grease." Available on a 70's 50 film pack.

James Devlin (Steve Forrest) is a tough man who made his living with his gun. However, he's been convicted of murder an is awaiting a hanging. The killing was in self-defense but his reputation alone was enough to guarantee a death sentence. When this unrepentant man is hung, however, something very strange happens. Though clearly dead, hours later he comes to life and spends much of the rest of the film trying to figure out why as well as what his place will now be in the world. Soon, a jerk named Halleck (Cameron Mitchell) gives him a reason for being...and he makes it his life's work to fight this man and protect the widow who Halleck is trying to bully. Oh, and did I mention that the widow is a widow because her husband was the man that Devlin killed??This is a decent film and mildly enjoyable. I think if they'd played the supernatural angle more, it would have been a more interesting film...and then possibly might have been picked up as a series. On the other hand, by 1974, westerns had pretty much come and gone....and why the network would revive the genre is tough to understand.

Bland, predictable made-for-TV western has Steve Forrest as a feared gunfighter convicted of a murder and sentenced to hang, but who manages to survive the hanging and is set free. By-the-numbers script holds no surprises and the characterizations are all cardboard, including Forrest's one-note portrayal of a killer given a second chance. Bad-guy Cameron Mitchell chews the scenery, pretty Sharon Acker is earnest as a widow who owns a silver mine that "silver king" Mitchell wants to get and Will Geer is somewhat enjoyable as a crusty old-timer called "Nameless" who's Acker's hired hand. It's not long before you can predict exactly what's going to happen, what the bad guy's going to do, what the good guy's going to do and how things will be neatly wrapped up at the end. The whole production looks rushed and cheesy, the equivalent of a Monogram western of the '40s--and, like those Monogram westerns, it's a harmless time-waster. You could do worse, but you could also do much, much better.

This was to be a series pilot, but didn't get picked up. The typical way a drama series pilot in the 70s was handled was to make it long enough to end up as a movie of the week, so if it didn't get picked up as a series, then at least some production money was recouped. I saw this after seeing The Lazarus Man series, and was surprised at the similarities. This one is typical TV western fare, older gunslinger sees the evil of his ways, and turns into good gunslinger, yet always full of angst about the old ways. The whole idea of a hanged man returning to life was merely a contrivance to make things more interesting. I must say I missed the whole mind-reading ability thing. It wasn't evident apparently because there were plenty of times the lead didn't read someone's mind when if he had, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble. By the way, this movie shows why Cameron Mitchell should always be remembered as the epitome of hammy acting.