This movie is a bizarre western that works, filmed like a Gothic horror film, it sets a pace for action that is brisk and unapologetic. The cavalier personalities of the main characters seem like an odd fit with the rest of the brooding characters. Dean Jagger gives a fine performance as the love struck dupe who thinks that a way to Stanwyck's heart is by being a groveling yes man and cuckold. A friend told me that the intent was to make Stanwyck's brother, her illegitimate son, and I think the strangeness of their relationship would have been less creepy had it been written that way. The way it stands there is a bit of over the top emotional attachment that is on the fringe of a husband and wife relationship.That being said, the scene where Stanwyck's is at the burnt remnants of her childhood home is sheer artistry, and visually arresting. To sum it up, the sheer weirdness and bizarre dialogue, along with the writing of the story, added with some truly unexpected twists make this a film worth viewing.

Samuel Fuller, who wrote and directed most of his movies, was one of those filmmakers whose movies were rarely as good as they could have been. That was chiefly because he rarely got a chance to work with "A- List" actors, or with sufficient amounts of time and money. Almost all of his films were intended to be "B" movies or "Second Features", intended to be completed on a budget. Nevertheless, most of his films have a very individualistic style unlike anybody else's. "Forty Guns" is a case in point. Fuller did get Barbra Stanwick to work with, and she was always a great actress. However, she was past her prime as a leading lady, this being well over a decade after her great roles in films such as "The Lady Eve" and "Double Indemnity". Here she does a great job in a sort of dress-rehearsal for her later long-running role in the 1960s television series, "The Big Valley". However, this being a Sam Fuller movie, the character she plays as Jessica Drummond is a long way from that of her later character, Victoria Barkley. In "Forty Guns" Stanwick plays an "Alpha Female", ruling absolutely over the surrounding countryside with the aid of her own private army of gunmen.Into her realm stray Barry Sullivan and his two younger brothers, characters obviously inspired by those of the Earp brothers. While passing through town they immediately run foul of Stanwick's younger brother. Played by John Ericson, he is a spoiled punk who, backed up by Stanwick's gunmen, shoots the elderly and myopic town marshal just for kicks and then commences wrecking the whole town merely fun of it. Putting a stop to the mayhem, and the perpetrator in jail, earns the brothers the thanks of the townspeople and the enmity of Stanwick.Fuller, who began as a writer, was nothing if not an iconoclast. He loved nothing better than to turn clichés on their heads. He does that here in several places, in a particularly jarring manner. The initial confrontation between Sullivan and Ericson ends in a completely unexpected manner. A confrontation between Stanwick and Sullivan at her home morphs into a bizarre scene in which she admires his pistol in a suggestive manner. There is also a wedding scene that, likewise, suddenly goes off in a completely different and unexpected direction.Finally, without giving too much away, the ending reverses another movie cliché in a particularly shocking manner. While not wishing to give away the ending, it must be noted that rumor has it that, back in 1957, the "Powers-That-Be" at the studio were appalled with Fuller's ending. In fact, even today it would be considered pretty shocking. As a result they compelled Fuller to literally "tack on" a new ending that neither fit, worked, nor even made any sense. See the movie and you'll understand what I mean.I rate this one only at seven solely because of the obviously tacked-on ending that doesn't work, and which succeeds in nearly ruining what could have been a really superior western.

In 1957 western Forty Guns, Sam Fuller crams an awful lot into an 80 minute runtime; indeed a film whose runtime is double that of its titular digit and whose substance still manages to outweigh some of our more contemporary star dominated genre pictures that are twice, or even three, times as long. The film is a character piece above all else; a film depicting love coming to a zone dominated by hate, a film depicting the changing of a guard where previously a seemingly unmovable, long standing patriarchy was only ever in force and a film depicting relationships with a bit of sustenance to them where previously there were minions doing dirty work and uneasy sibling allegiances.The film will open with a sweet tracking shot, it will end with a bitter-sweet final composition as two people appear to ride off together – during the middle section, pain; affection and most things in-between bitter and sweet will play out between a handful of people in an Old West town of way-back-when. It is a charming film, a short; sharp; brisk Western made by someone between producing the likes of Pickup on South Street and The Big Red One – a film with the scope and visual flair of the latter, but with the ground out, potentially violent, B-movie feel of the former. And then there is that opening, a wondrous series of cuts and compositions depicting a number of riders hurtling towards a seemingly random horse and cart plodding along on this open, barren plain under the hot sun of the American frontier. In the wagon sit the Bonnell brothers: Wes, Chico and Griff – towards them thunder the titular forty guns, a twice-score of men whose immediate presence strikes us as potentially dangerous but whose presence in the film in relation to these three men will only remain as potentially dangerous out of the actions of its leader.And then there is that leader: a woman, a female character whose presence even appears to startle the camera itself in her reveal – a mixture of surprise and allure as we focus on this distinct, black-clad figure atop a white horse dominating the scene and in charge of those, it appears, who follow her. She is Barbara Stanwyck's Jessica Drummond, a land owner but tyrant to those in the locale around her; someone who comes equipped with a hot headed brother who'll rear up later on with its own problems. If there was a protagonist, it would be amongst the three brothers and lie with that of Griff (Sullivan); a lawman whose seen things, and most likely done things, in the past of which he isn't proud although now works on the straight and narrow. He is a man here for one of Drummond's own forty guns, for they committed a felony and must now be taken away so as to be brought to justice.Things are not that easy, and Drummond gets in the way of business. The idea of being with Drummond occurs to Griff for the first time during a public bath set sequence, a scene wherein the character is spoken about as being this indomitable, untameable person – the character even lending time to forge a meek song in her honour. It is later God himself who has to interject in order to force some sort of a tryst between the two, when Drummond finds herself caught in a natural disaster and Griff is there to remedy the situation. Away from the central tract lies the tale of Drummond's aforementioned brother Brockie (Ericson); a man with a violent streak who upsets the elements and causes havoc in the nearby town when the chief law enforcer is killed. Meanwhile, the second of those three Bonnell brothers, in Wes (Barry), strikes up their own relationship with local girl Louvenie – this is before later coming to undertake the role of this now vacant position as a law enforcer.Ultimately, the film's more interesting strand involves its trump card Drummond and its brooding lead Griff, whose nature and set of characteristics, as we witness him essentially 'go up against' Drummond, has us think that if anyone was ever change Drummond, it may very well be him. Where these two sets of factions meet in the opening scene, as if coming face to face with one another in a 'head on' fashion, Fuller's film is effectively a depiction of each group of persons respective disintegration: Griff and his brothers as these people who arrive in the land looking for someone but end up finding something else and 'The Guns' as a group of people enjoying their power and accepting it at the bereft of a female leader who take against her beginning to put other men before them. We enjoy our time with these people and we enjoy Fuller's direction, particularly how he manages to shift from this potentially aggressive relationship between Bonnell and Drummond and back again. In fact, we come to enjoy most of what's in Forty Guns.

One of the most independent of Directors, Sam Fuller is much more popular today among movie buffs and critics than he ever was as a working film maker. He constantly fought studio execs and was in and out of the system more than Sam Peckinpah.He often worked with low budgets but that never restrained him from delivering interesting, Avant-Gard, surreal, personal films that are most often a different take or a clear-lens look at some of the subjects that Hollywood sidestepped and ignored.This existential Western should be examined as a precursor to what was to follow in the coming decades. A distorted view of the genre that stands out among the glut of 50's TV and Big Screen Westerns. It is pulp fiction, a paperback like, sultry, lurid, in your face style that is fun, sensitive, brutal, and so direct that it is stunning. The "High-Ridin Woman with a Whip" song is so breathtakingly irritating and so intensely promiscuous that it sets the stage for what is to come. One of the most offbeat, stylish and entertaining offerings of any genre. One cannot view this one with indifference. You will notice it and remember it.