Strongly recommended. It’s incredible that this was the only movie Sam Fuller
made with Barbara Stanwyck. Forty Guns was pivotal to the Cattle
Queen persona she rode into The Big Valley, but this is much, much more. The
sexual camp of this film is breathtaking. Stanwyck opens the action on a white
horse leading forty bought guns, riding down all comers and lashing Tombstone into submission.
This spectacular tracking shot must be seen in wide screen. Barry Sullivan, as
a Wyatt Earp knock-off, supplies the film’s real woodwork, artistically and
anatomically. Further twisting the gender pretzel is Mistress Barbara in tight
black jeans, a sexy lady gunsmith, and two cringing law men (Hank Worden and Dean
Jagger). Fuller includes all his signatures, stylized shots, ferocious
violence, and weird songs. Photographed by frequent Robert Aldrich colleague, Joseph Biroc (The Flight of the Phoenix),
this is Cinemascope at its best!
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