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Undescribable Perfection

The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

You might want to take a peek at this Western.Here's what I liked:Very unusual appearance by Harry Morgan as a tough henchman. Morgan spent most of his career playing buffoons.Pretty well executed film noir technique, which is odd to see in the Western format. The film has an effective hard edge to it, especially considering how low budget it is.I always like watching Walter Brennan play against type.Here's what I didn't like:There's nothing really Western about that movie except costumes. This is an urban detective who-dun-it simply transposed to a Western setting.Cheap production, completely back lot, William Eliot is not a very good lead.Ridiculous stereotyping of Mexican character.

The Showdown is one unusual western product from Herbert J. Yates's Republic Pictures. It's a vengeance quest tale the kind of thing Randolph Scott would be doing in his westerns. Wild Bill Elliott, hero to many a kid for being Red Ryder plays a mean and vicious former state Texas policeman on the trail of someone who shot his brother in the back. The film also bears a lot of resemblance in the production values to the Dick Powell western, Stagecoach West.The film opens with Elliott digging up his brother's body at the graveyard, an unusual enough opening for a western. 19th century forensics shows Elliott that his brother was killed, shot in the back with a derringer. It's the only clue he's got to the identity of the perpetrator.Cattleowner Walter Brennan hires Elliott to drive his herd through to Montana. Elliott was a member of the Texas Police when Texas was under carpetbagger rule. The mostly ex-rebels who are Brennan's hands have a hate on for Elliott on general principles. He hires on because he's got reason to suspect his culprit will be on the cattle drive.Take a look down the cast list and you'll see that we've got a treasure trove full of suspects, remembering the roles a lot of these people play in films. A few get killed along the way and are eliminated as suspects, some are eliminated by other means. I have to say that I guessed wrong myself as to the identity.The Showdown teases you every minute of the film as to the identity of the murderer. Elliott schemes and searches his suspects for the owner of La Pistolita. In this great cast I have to say that one who stands out is Harry Morgan. He plays very much against type as a hot tempered young gunslinger, far from Colonel Sherman Potter of MASH as you can get.When the identity of the killer is revealed the climax is in how it happens, how the individual meets his end and Elliott's reaction to same. The Showdown is a great example of blended genre, a western noir. It's a real crackerjack sleeper of a film and I think people who generally don't like westerns will gravitate to this film.

Too bad budget-cutting Republic pictures spent all their money on the script and cast of this surprising little sleeper. It left them none for badly needed location shots, or failing that, at least to improve on some of the poorly done process shots. Note the number of times the horsemen stand statically in front of a backscreen projection instead of riding across a natural scene These cost-cutters count here, because otherwise this is an unnoticed little gem not usually expected from the likes of Saturday-matinée Republic. The script is excellent with a number of surprises, and holds interest throughout. The main cast (Elliot, Brennan, Windsor), along with supporting players (Morgan, Williams, Ching) are as good as could be expected from the major studios. Only Nacho Galindo's buffoonish comic-relief suggests Republic's usual fare. Actually, this is a noir Western produced at a time when film noir dominated many urban crime dramas. The atmosphere here, especially the stormy opening scene, reminds me of the fine Bob Mitchum Western, Blood on the Moon, which also made good use of brooding night-time sets. Then too, Elliot's revenge-obsessed "bad good-guy" strikingly anticipates Randolph Scott"s running character in Budd Boetticher's cult Westerns of the late 1950's. Anyway, this is a surprisingly good little drama, despite the shortcomings.

This movie makes my top-ten list of greatest westerns. Great acting from the usually laughable Wild Bill Elliot, great direction and awesome character development along with a good mystery. The subtle dialog from Elliot brings a new light to his acting ability.