High Riding Woman ... with a Whip!

The theme song says it all, "She's a high riding woman with a whip". In Sam Fuller's Forty Guns, Barbara Stanwyck plays a cattle baroness who controls an Arizona town with a crew of 40 hired guns, including the sheriff, the deputies and a judge. When bounty hunter Barry Sullivan comes to town with his two brothers, he is bound to taste her lash.

Seriously, the movie is all western legends amped up over the top and served with a helping of double entendres. Example: Stanwyck, talking about Sullivan's gun: "Can I feel it?" Sullivan refuses: "It might go off in your face." This is hardly even an entendre and a half.

Stanwyck is suitably iconic - in the dinner scene, the camera pans down a long table with all forty "guns" and finally, her at the head. It's clear that she can take them all. In another scene, she is dragged by a horse, and it clearly isn't a stunt double. The shot tracks her down the street, then shows Sullivan freeing her without a cut. She's a little older, and playing her age, but that just makes it more sexy.

Even though she falls for Sullivan about half way through, she is still a high riding woman. With a whip!