Duel At Silver Creek [DVD]

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Ruthless claim-jumpers, femme fatale guile, tenacious lawman, vengeful quickdraw-turned-deputy: The Duel At Silver Creek is lean, pulpy, ‘50s b-western fun. six-shooter-filled minutes of a playful script bolstering the director’s sturdy craft and action staging, unabashedly embracing cliches to pack its runtime with noirish personalities and fast-paced law-vs-outlaw maneuvering. That all combines to make The Duel at Silver Creek a solid little Western that uses the conventions of the genre well in a swift and colourful manner.

A gang of outlaws is murdering miners and taking over their claims, but they cross the wrong man when they target the father of Luke Cromwell (Audie Murphy), a gunslinger known as "the Silver Kid. The issue of vulnerability, of the complementary nature of good and evil, is central to the comprehension of Seigel’s films. Set in the town of Silver Creek, it seems like there's a lot that goes on beneath the surface all the time. oh to be in the wild west and wear a cool black leather jacket like audie murphy -- his babyface blasting baddies with two shiny six-guns, because sometimes overkill is the right amount of kill. During the climactic gunfight where rider Rod Lacy is himself chased on horseback by the marshal and both then dismount to continue shooting at each other, Lacy astonishingly manages to fire 11 shots from what is clearly a revolver pistol (which normally fires only 6) before an attempted 12th shot reveals it to be out of ammunition, and only then is Lacy forced to reload it - he is out of frame briefly whilst on his galloping horse (the camera cuts to the chasing marshal) but could not have conceivably re-loaded during that very short time, and at no point throughout is he shown to be carrying 2 guns.All the clichés are here but they are delivered with a slight sense of fun that helps it move smoothly. The local marshal, "Lightning" Tyrone (Stephen McNally), is also tracking the gang, but receives a crippling injury during a gunfight. I know there hasn't been that many new releases during the pandemic, cinematic visits have been scarce, with cinemas closed for long periods of time and studios holding back films to make the most from their investment. A gang of claim jumpers are forcing the owners to sign their claims over to them but then kill them anyway.

When Marshall 'Lightning' Tyrone takes a party after the gang he leaves old timer Dan Music as Deputy of the town. It was the first time Murphy had appeared in a film where he played a character who was good throughout the movie. Participating in the proceedings are Faith Domergue, Susan Cabot and Eugene Iglesias, who gives the film's best performance.Don Siegel's cool western bubbles over with action while there's a lot of stuff you can read into it that's hidden between the lines. DUEL AT SILVER CREEK; screen play by Gerald Drayson Adams and Joseph Hoffman; directed by Don Siegel; produced by Leonard Goldstein for Universal-International. A gang of claim jumpers is infesting the territory, gaining ownership of undermanned mining operations through extortion. There’s enough action, and it moves along quickly enough, that it’s hard to fault the movie for anything.

We hear his narration of the case of a gang of claim-jumpers led by Gerald Mohr as Rod Lacy, Opal's slimy brother. The damaged, vulnerable hero and the anti-hero are facets in the same persona and cannot be separated, even when the harm is physical as in The Duel at Silver Creek. The screen play written by Gerald Drayson Adams and Joseph Hoffman familiarly stacks the motivations and incidents and, unfortunately, blunts some picaresque possibilities. A young cowboy played by real life war hero turned movie star Audie Murphy is on a revenge quest after the claim jumping bastards. There are a lot of elegant tracking shots here, and the way the titular duel is shot makes it clear that director Don Siegel was really relishing getting to play around in the western sandbox.

This Audie Murphy vehicle has the feel of a B-Western, but would it be in Technicolor if it was cheap? Tyrone pursues the treacherous Opal Lacey ( Faith Domergue), who is secretly in league with the claim jumpers, and Cromwell falls for tomboy Dusty Fargo ( Susan Cabot) who is only interested in Lightning. As for the ladies, the nice one, Miss Cabot, runs around garbed like the village blacksmith, complete with smoking revolver. The tropes and structure that he's working with here are certainly very conventional since it looks, acts, and is executed like a pretty typical Western of the classic variety.

The prettiest, Miss Domergue, not only dresses to the ears but, as one of the chief culprits, is not above garroting a wounded man to death. The Duel at Silver Creek is a 1952 American Western film directed by Don Siegel; his first film in the Western genre.Aside from Domergue the 'baddies' are fairly unmemorable; when the film started they were tough and violent but eventually we are presented Mohr's words in place of this and it really isn't enough for a fun B-movie. A version of this article appears in print on of the National edition with the headline: THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; U. Lightning sets out to get to the bottom of the murder and has several suspects already before the deceitful Opal Lacy points him towards Luke Cromwell, known as the Silver Kid. I don't know what surprised me the most, a western directed by Don Siegel and such a clean one (in the sense it is not very gritty and it follows the plot points of most westerns of the 50's) or the fact that Lee Marvin once had hair which was not white. don 'the don' siegel directs with intense grit -- a comparative trifle, but the seeds of greatness to come; the rare one of his films that actually has interesting female characters, including a high-femme villain!