Leonard Goldstein, the producer, has propped this routine affair against some average Technicolor scenery, and the commotion remains as pat and unsurprising as the kicked-up dust, which, in all fairness to Don Siegel's direction, is plentiful. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Meanwhille, Marshal Lightnin' Tyrone is also after the gang; recovering from one raid, he meets femme fatale Opal Lacy, who may not be healthy for him to know. A gang of claim jumpers are forcing the owners to sign their claims over to them but then kill them anyway. We hear his narration of the case of a gang of claim-jumpers led by Gerald Mohr as Rod Lacy, Opal's slimy brother.

oh to be in the wild west and wear a cool black leather jacket like audie murphy -- his babyface blasting baddies with two shiny six-guns, because sometimes overkill is the right amount of kill. Siegel's first western is a fun film and should be enjoyed as such – it's far from his best and fans may only come to it because of the significance in his career but it is worth seeing if you're in the mood for this type of film. Alone with McNally, Domergue vamps him into forgetting his job…In a sense, McNally’s gun had abandons him by becoming lame after an injury, leaving him more open to assault.There are a lot of elegant tracking shots here, and the way the titular duel is shot makes it clear that director Don Siegel was really relishing getting to play around in the western sandbox. I don't know what surprised me the most, a western directed by Don Siegel and such a clean one (in the sense it is not very gritty and it follows the plot points of most westerns of the 50's) or the fact that Lee Marvin once had hair which was not white. The plot is basic but enjoyable with plenty of likable characters who are as bright as the Technicolor they are presented in.

As for the ladies, the nice one, Miss Cabot, runs around garbed like the village blacksmith, complete with smoking revolver. Kass remarks that Audie Murphy is “ludicrously attired in black leather, like a Western The Wild One (1953). A version of this article appears in print on of the National edition with the headline: THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; U.Faith Domergue was so striking and charismatic, it’s unfortunate that she never rose above B pictures. At just 77 minutes long, The Duel at Silver Creek is hardly the lengthiest Western ever made yet Don Siegel is still able to pack into it a lot of action in his first outing in the genre. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.

Unashamedly pulpy is this Western, no surprise when you see that it's an early film from legend Don Siegel. During the climactic gunfight where rider Rod Lacy is himself chased on horseback by the marshal and both then dismount to continue shooting at each other, Lacy astonishingly manages to fire 11 shots from what is clearly a revolver pistol (which normally fires only 6) before an attempted 12th shot reveals it to be out of ammunition, and only then is Lacy forced to reload it - he is out of frame briefly whilst on his galloping horse (the camera cuts to the chasing marshal) but could not have conceivably re-loaded during that very short time, and at no point throughout is he shown to be carrying 2 guns. Tyrone pursues the treacherous Opal Lacey ( Faith Domergue), who is secretly in league with the claim jumpers, and Cromwell falls for tomboy Dusty Fargo ( Susan Cabot) who is only interested in Lightning. Luke manages to find out that the marshal's girlfriend is really one of the gang and exposes her and her brother as the real killers.A young cowboy played by real life war hero turned movie star Audie Murphy is on a revenge quest after the claim jumping bastards. It was the first time Murphy had appeared in a film where he played a character who was good throughout the movie.