Train in Vain

Not sure why we queued up Last Train from Gun Hill (1959). Probably because it had Anthony Quinn in a lead role.

It starts horribly. An Indian woman (Ziva Rodann) and boy in a wagon pass two cowboys laying around drinking: Earl Holliman (last seen drinking in Forbidden Planet) and Brian Hutton. They grab Rodann and rip off her dress, but not before she gives Holliman a good lash on the face with a whip. The boy grabs on of the men's horses and rides for help.

He rides up to Marshall Kirk Douglas, and it turns out that he's his father. They ride back to find Rodann dead. But Douglas recognizes the saddle, and heads to Gun Hill. On his way, he meets a floozy, Carolyn Jones. She tries to make conversation, then tells him she knows whose saddle he's carrying. He says he knows too.

We meet Quinn, the big man in Gun Hill, running it with an iron fist. Holliman is his spoiled weak son, who claims that his horse and saddle were stolen outside a bar. When Douglas arrives, it turns out that he and Quinn are old friends - Quinn even saved his life once. Douglas plays it light. He returns the saddle, and when Quinn asks if he caught the horse thieves that took it, he just says he is working on it. When he mentions that one of the men should have a whip mark on his face, a look goes over Quinn's face. Douglas knows he's hiding something - and quickly determines that it's his son.

It all comes out - Douglas now knows that Holliman and a crony raped and killed his wife. Quinn begs Douglas not to take his boy, but Douglas says he'll take both back to stand trial - on the last train at 9:30.

How he'll do it, against Quinn and the whole town, is the rest of the movie. He only has Jones on his side, and even she is pretty ambivalent. She was Quinn's mistress, but doesn't like his selfish and bullying ways - or his devotion to his feckless son. 

Director John Sturges puts some real awesomeness into this movie. Aside from the operatic revenge plot and the iconic actors, there's some pretty cool scene setting. For instance, the last act is played out in front of a burning hotel at night. 

But it is a little tough to start off with the rape and murder of a native woman, and then devolve into a struggle between two male friends. Is this "fridging"?