I first watched this movie decades ago, probably when I was I’m my teens, and possibly when I was spending some summer vacation time with my grandparents, who seemingly were always watching western shows. I read my first Zane Grey western, Riders of the Purple Sage, in that old house.

I am not a student of film history, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this 50s era movie came to be a template of sorts for westerns. Our hero is by no means an anti-hero like Eastward’s Man with No Name, but he does plays things close to the vest early on in his attempt to leave his past behind.

The plot is basic and rather predictable, but if it was an trendsetter as I just alluded, then maybe it set some of the western movie cliches that emerge. It is quite watchable and well-made, though perhaps not quite on the same level in my mind as a film like High Noon, which steadily builds up suspense through the townspeople refusing to help the hero, while this film doesn’t aim for suspense as much as it relies upon action: elaborate fistfights and gunplay. (Though it has tension only we viewers are aware of with its implied romantic extra-marital tension.