User Reviews

THE WESTERNER "Hand on the Gun"1960

This is the 12th episode of the short run western series, THE WESTERNER. The series starred Brian Keith as a wandering cow-hand travelling the southwest United States. Of note here is the creator and producer, Sam Peckinpah. Peckinpah is of course known as the writer and director of, THE WILD BUNCH. This series only ran for 13 episodes in the fall of 1960.

This one starts with Keith running a of bunch of wild horse wranglers out in the scrubs. There is a bit of tension in the air as Keith and his crew are doing far better than the crew led by, John Pickard. The men are camped down for the night and Pickard is hitting the bottle. He is a mean drunk and is trying to bait Keith into a fight. Keith will have none of it.

Out of the dark rides a young fellow, Ben Cooper. The men all get a good laugh after they take a gander at Cooper. He is dressed like an Eastern dandy fresh off the train. And that is exactly what Cooper is. He has read all the "cowboy stories" and wishes to become one. He is even packing a fancy pistol. He asks if he could join up and learn how to become a wrangler.

Keith takes the young man on in exchange for lessons on how to read. Cooper is always busy playing with his pistol doing fancy tricks etc. Keith tells him to stop. Tricks mean nothing when it comes to using a gun when it counts. Matters come to a head between Keith and the other crew boss, Pickard. Pickard collects a round in his shoulder when he goes to back shoot Keith. A member of Keith's crew, Michael Ansara warned Keith as Pickard went for his iron.

Kieth's crew decide they have caught enough wild ponies and head back to town. Cooper joins in as they run the critters back for sale. Cooper though just can't stop playing with his fancy revolver. Keith finally belts the kid to get his point across. "Out west, if you draw a gun, you better be meaning to use it. Someone is bound to shoot you if you keep twirling that thing around" Keith tells him.

The thumping just makes the young man upset. He now starts in on Michael Ansara, calling him an old Mexican and the like. The men hit town and sell off the horses before hitting the local saloon for a bottle.

Needless to say Cooper keeps yapping at Ansara till he finally goads him into a fight. Cooper waits in the street outside the saloon. Keith and Ansara sit and finish their whiskey. Keith exits first, mounts his horse and waits. Then Ansara steps into the street where Cooper is waiting. Cooper goes for a quick draw and fires wildly at Ansara. Ansara calmly takes aim and fires, knocking Cooper to the dirt. He then mounts up and both Keith and Ansara slowly ride out of town. They do not even give Cooper a glance, as the man lays there dying as a slow offbeat version of "Streets of Laredo" plays in the background.

This is a pretty good episode which has series creator, Sam Peckinpah back in the director's chair.

Unbeliebable, how much drama Peckinpah, known for excessively long director's cuts, could pack into only 25 minutes. First he shows the tension inside the group. Then he adds more with the stranger, who, by ignoring both the spoken and unspoken rules, makes the lines of loyalty and dislike between the men visible. Thus the tension adds up and results in a final shootout. The experienced man prepares himself for the possible ending, the unexperienced is just trigger- happy. It ends in favor of the man who knows that shooting a man is more than just shooting. The film initially made me think of „Don't take your Guns to Town", whereas the end made me humming „Streets of Laredo".

BEWARE SPOILERS Yes this story is very unusual. The relation between the lead Keith and the Young tenderfoot doesn't prepare you to the final scene, where the tenderfoot dies in the dust and the lead goes away without even a glance to the dying young man whom he taught some guns lessons to earlier in the episode. Bitter ending, as I crave for.

This is a good entry with top notch actors. John Pickard has been in a slew of episodes of many tv series; Michael Ansara has a fitting role of an experienced man of the times; Ben Cooper is the focus of the show. Cooper is wearing an anachronistic quick draw rig with a steel lined holster dropped low, probably by Arvo Ojala. He's been in many westerns and was probably one of the faster fast draw celebrities; I read that the ubiquitous balding John Doucette was probably fastest. What struck me as almost humorous was the way Mr. Ansara handled the younger, inexperienced gun. He walked out of the saloon gun in hand, not in his holster; Cooper is startled to learn his quick draw won't help and fires two wild shots, none of which hit Ansara who aims his fire and hits Cooper to the ground in pain. I have often wondered why Matt Dillon didn't do the same; it would have been much safer and...duller. Another bit of reality was showing how a 45 Long Colt cartridge would enter fairly small and exit with a real life threatening hole. When Pickard got hit, being hit in the arm or shoulder usually is treated inconsequentially; here it lead to profuse bleeding and death. I think Peckinpah was probably a shooter who had immense respect for firearms and was dispelling the public's fantasies of "it's just a flesh wound" had vastly underrated the brutality of violence and death in the late 1800s and early 1900s when medicine and surgeons were miles or years away. It's too bad there is only one episode after this. Let's not forget that Brian Keith's presence made this series what it was; he fit the role of a survivor who would walk away when fighting was a waste and he knew it, but would under the right circumstances.