Directed by Budd Boetticher
This gritty noir inverts and interrogates the essential set up of Boetticher’s Ranown Westerns. Here, the solitary figure seeking vengeance is a straight psychopath, a veteran-turned-bank-thief whose wife was killed in a raid lead by Joseph Cotten’s detective. Cotten’s hand-wringing persona underscores the film’s post-war gender anxieties while Boetticher’s camera punches through the facade of suburban California to expose the simmering resentment and violence underneath.
United Artists. Producer: Robert L. Jacks. Screenwriter: Harold Medford. Based on the novelette by John and Ward Hawkins. Cinematographer: Lucien Ballard. Editor: George Gittens. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Alan Hale, Michael Pate.
35mm, b/w, 73 min.
