Of the various Westerns included in the 2-Discer I rented in order to view THE JACKALS (1967), this made-for-TV outing seemed to me to be the least promising or, if you will, the most disposable. However, it seemed silly to me to consciously pass on it as long as it was in my hands and, funnily enough, it turned out to be the most satisfactory of the lot!
The cast list was decent enough, actually – Slim Pickens, Geoffery Lewis, Jeff Corey and Estelle Parsons – so I had that to look forward to from the outset. However, it was the winsome performances of the youngsters – Marjoe Gortner and Pamela Sue Martin – which was the most pleasant surprise. The latter was familiar to me from THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) and her signature role of Fallon Carrington Colby in the TV-series DYNASTY (1981-84) but the former I only had vague knowledge of i.e. that he appeared in the disaster epic EARTHQUAKE (1974) and the notorious Euro-Cult item, STARCRASH (1979; which, incidentally, I recently acquired as a DivX). Gortner’s amiable personality – playing a hounded gunfighter opportunistically taking on the identity of a dead parson in a one-horse town – managed to carry the film throughout its brisk 74-minute running time.
Frankly, the above-mentioned character actors don’t have all that much to do in the film – apart from Slim Pickens who appears as Gortner’s cynical observer of a sidekick – but Geoffrey Lewis scores as another famed gunfighter out to take Gortner in a face-to-face shootout which sees both duellists missing each other (out of respect for one another)!
The cast list was decent enough, actually – Slim Pickens, Geoffery Lewis, Jeff Corey and Estelle Parsons – so I had that to look forward to from the outset. However, it was the winsome performances of the youngsters – Marjoe Gortner and Pamela Sue Martin – which was the most pleasant surprise. The latter was familiar to me from THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) and her signature role of Fallon Carrington Colby in the TV-series DYNASTY (1981-84) but the former I only had vague knowledge of i.e. that he appeared in the disaster epic EARTHQUAKE (1974) and the notorious Euro-Cult item, STARCRASH (1979; which, incidentally, I recently acquired as a DivX). Gortner’s amiable personality – playing a hounded gunfighter opportunistically taking on the identity of a dead parson in a one-horse town – managed to carry the film throughout its brisk 74-minute running time.
Frankly, the above-mentioned character actors don’t have all that much to do in the film – apart from Slim Pickens who appears as Gortner’s cynical observer of a sidekick – but Geoffrey Lewis scores as another famed gunfighter out to take Gortner in a face-to-face shootout which sees both duellists missing each other (out of respect for one another)!