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Aug 26, 2021 Web Exclusive By Stephen Danay

Last Train from Gun Hill was something of a spiritual sequel to the 1957 film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Reuniting producer Hal B. Wallis, director John Sturges, and star Kirk Douglas, the film was an attempt to capture the collective success they’d had two years prior. Although Last Train from Gun Hill did not replicate the box office success of its predecessor, it does allow for a small window into the way American westerns were changing in the late 1950s.

Although it’s not as well remembered as some of its contemporaries, Last Train from Gun Hill was an A-list production when it debuted in 1959. Sturges was coming off the success of Bad Day at Black Rock and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral - although his greatest hits were still a few years away in the form of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape - and stars Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn had five Oscar nominations and two wins between them. Shot in both Technicolor and VistaVision - both staples of higher end 1950s productions as they attempted to compete with television - the film has a bright, upbeat visual palate that’s somewhat at odds with the grim nature of the story. The film opens with a fairly brutal - if obviously implied and unseen - rape/murder that sets Douglas’s Matt Morgan on a quest for revenge. A cowboy turned respected U.S. Marshall, Morgan discovers that the man who killed his wife is the son of his former riding partner Craig Belden, who is now a powerful land baron.

In addition to the extremely dark inciting incident, there are a few other elements of the film that foreshadow the shifting nature of westerns and American genre films as a whole. Quinn plays Belden with something approximating a New York accent. It’s a jarring choice for a western villain but it does a good job of evoking the subtext that Belden rules his ranch and holdings like a gangster. Earl Holiman, the actor playing his son, has the intensity of an early method actor. Beyond these elements, Last Train from Gun Hill is a serviceable if predictable western; revenge, guys getting shot off horses, duels in the street. You know the vibe.