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Admirable film.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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.

The movie was getting a little tedious for me until Victor Sen Yung showed up as the Chinese bartender Chang uttering that great line to Rory Calhoun's Hemp Brown quoted in my summary above. It brought to mind another terrific line from the comedy Western "Blazing Saddles" when Gene Wilder says to Cleavon Little - "What's a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?" The story here has a bit of the "Branded" TV show story line, in that Lieutenant Hemp Brown is discharged from the Cavalry after his contingent of soldiers is wiped out and an Army payroll strong box is stolen under his command. Convicted of cowardice, Brown puts on his civilian duds and sets out to find the former soldier (John Larch) who ambushed his squad, who was presumed already killed in action some months earlier when his soldier uniform and ID wound up on a corpse. I don't think I've come across that ruse before in a Western.Brown had his man too until he made a rookie mistake and took his eye off the ball at the Slaughter House. Rory Calhoun's not supposed to make those kinds of errors; I guess he had to take a hit for the sake of the story. But then he makes another one when he goes to sleep in the Bolanos show wagon and Mona (Beverly Garland) grabs his gun. Like I say, the back and forth manner in which Hemp Brown lost and regained the upper hand got a little tedious after a while.I'll say this for Beverly Garland though, she generally doesn't look as good as she did in this picture and those legs! - man, they went all the way up to there! The red saloon gal outfit helped too, so much so that after a while watching her get ready for the show, Hemp ran out of conversation topics.

I swear while watching Rory Calhoun in the title role in The Saga Of Hemp Brown I could hear the faint echo of that famous theme from Branded. Rory is a cavalry officer who loses an army payroll, his whole patrol but him is killed and also killed was the wife of the commanding officer who was hitching a ride back to the post. For reasons I'm not clear on the leader of the outlaw gang John Larch wants Calhoun to live. So he sends Calhoun back to the fort tied to his horse and they give him the Jason McCord treatment. Dishonorable discharge because they can't prove he stole the payroll. But he's discharged for cowardice.Calhoun accuses Larch, but the army says Larch was killed in action a few years earlier. So Calhoun goes out looking for Larch.Calhoun wants Larch back alive, why I can't figure that since a corpse with a couple of fresh bullet holes would have certainly proved that Larch was not dead. That should have gotten Calhoun clear if not the army payroll returned.Definitely not one of Rory Calhoun's better westerns though John Larch as always is one mean and swaggering villain.

After a botched robbery, an ex-cavalry lieutenant struggles to regain his good name by catching the real robber.The first part—the robbery and the cashiering—made me think this would be a superior western. But then Brown (Calhoun) meets up with Mona (Garland) who falls for him immediately Hollywood style, and it's murky time from there on, especially when it's trying to figure out who's on what side and why. One thing about these Universal oaters of the 50's—they're always well photographed in Technicolor. So when the story flounders, as it does here, there's still lots to look at. I'm just sorry that two of the best B-actors of the period, Garland and Larch, don't get to do more. I was looking forward to Garland's hoochie-koochie before she wrapped herself in a cloak. Anyhow, if you can figure out the latter part of the plot-line, you might enjoy this otherwise routine oater.

A rather decent U-I western from 1958.Rory Calhoun is properly vengeful as the wronged soldier who goes after bad guy John Larch and his gang. Beverly Garland was an interesting actress as she really was not beautiful in the traditional, glamorous girl or pinup way. I note this because she looks really 'hot' in this movie. I wonder if Director Richard Carlson had anything to do with this as he added a strong dose of heated passion in another U-I western that he directed four years prior ('Four Guns To the Border'); also with Calhoun. This is a good western and I don't think that you will be disappointed at all. For fans of Ms. Garland, I strongly recommend, 'Gunslinger' (1956) which is a very early directorial effort from Roger Corman. This is a bizarre western (also with John Ireland) which was completed on a shoestring budget and a one week shooting schedule.