FORTY GUNS

In the 1940s Barbara Stanwyck starred in a string of hit films, two of which are timeless classics ('The Lady Eve', 'Double Indemnity'), so that at one point she was one of the highest earning women in America.

So it is something of a mystery as to why her career fell off quite so badly in the 1950s, other than maybe her age (she was in her forties) limited the parts that came her way.

Anyway 1957 finds her starring in this strange and low budget black-and-white Western written and directed by Samuel Fuller, a filmmaker who can be best described as a maverick.

The film wasn't a commercial hit but has plenty going for it in its own peculiar way, and Stanwyck of course dominates every scene she is in, admittedly not difficult given that the rest of the cast is not exactly A-list.

The forty guns of the title refer to the hired hands who belong to the wealthy and domineering Jessica (Stanwyck), who is powerful enough to protect her wayward younger brother Brockie from suffering any consequences for his behaviour.

Into the town comes Griff and his two brothers who on behalf of the Attorney General are looking to arrest one of Jessica's men.

Complications ensue because both Brockie and Logan (another of Jessica's men, and a sheriff to boot) want to kill Griff, for reasons not entirely clear to me and whoever wrote the plot summary on Wikipedia.

No matter, a romance develops between Jessica and Griff, which ends happily, but not before some terrific scenes, and some shocking moments of violence (one of Fuller's trademarks).

In particular there's an ambitious and very effective sequence of Jessica and Griff getting caught up in a tornado; and another very suspenseful scene in which Logan has arranged an ambush so as to kill Griff.

There are a couple of scenes in which we see all forty men riding along in Jessica's wake, and then bizarrely we see them all seated at a very long table having their evening meal with Jessica in her grand dining room.  

Another somewhat unusual sight is an outdoor bathhouse comprising several circular wooden tubs.

All in all a memorable and idiosyncratic film.