I saw this as a kid and was impressed by it. Seeing it for only the second time, six-hundred and twelve months later, it STILL seems pretty good.
Ordinarily, one judges a film chiefly by the story, direction, and acting, but this is different because so much of whatever qualities it has comes from the talents of such neglected offices as Art Direction (Dave Milton), Set Decoration (Ben Bone), Makeup (Ted Larson), and Wardrobe.
The acting is okay -- no more than that, but no less. As the lead, the eponymous Slade, Mark Stevens looks the part. He's slim, dressed in dark clothes and a man-with-no-name kind of black hat. His eyes are rather large and overbeetled by a single line of extremely dark brows. As his wife, Dorothy Malone also looks good, as good as she ever has. Neither is an outstanding performer. Stevens isn't particularly expressive. He glares more than usual when he's supposed to be aroused in some way, but his style is cautious, akin to that of David Janssen, and seems more suited to a cool medium like television than to feature films. I could never understand Dorothy Malone's appeal, nor her long career. She's never embarrassingly bad. It's just that it seems that she and the viewer are both very aware of the fact that she's acting in a movie. Barton McClane is the main heavy and he does a schtick that was already old twenty years earlier. All the usual conventions are followed in the dialog. ("Go ahead -- reach for it.")
But the visuals are impressive in their shabby way. The bar, for instance. It's not one of those fancy bars with a stage and a band, or a big mirror on the wall, and a bartender wearing a ruffled white shirt with sleeve garters and a vest. It's a crummy joint. It looks real. The bar itself is no more than a couple of planks laid across a row of barrels. Everyone looks properly dusty, if not outright filthy. The men's shirts are sweated through and grimy, and their faces are dark with a patina of soil. (Even the hero's.) The story isn't easy to dismiss either. A boy sees his father killed and decides to rid society of its bad people. A stint in the Civil War army gives him his first taste of killing, an act that disquiets him but seems to draw him. His next job is that of law keeper in a small western town. He kills when necessary -- strictly in accordance with cheap movie formulae. (Two men stalk towards one another on an empty street.) But as the number of killings mount, they take their toll on his character, so that he begins to drink and abuses innocent people. He becomes a human wreck, ridden by a self-loathing he can't seem to understand. By the end he's killed an innocent man and is himself shot down by a friend.
Cheaply done, yes, but it raises questions of some importance. What is the psychological toll on the agent of social control? Is it possible, say, for a modern soldier to initiate a mass killing of enemy prisoners without being certifiably mad? And it poses a problem raised in Plato's "Republic." Who will guard the guardians? It's a rather touching story, like watching a Greek tragedy played out on the screen, in the form of a second-feature Western with over-the-hill actors.
Ordinarily, one judges a film chiefly by the story, direction, and acting, but this is different because so much of whatever qualities it has comes from the talents of such neglected offices as Art Direction (Dave Milton), Set Decoration (Ben Bone), Makeup (Ted Larson), and Wardrobe.
The acting is okay -- no more than that, but no less. As the lead, the eponymous Slade, Mark Stevens looks the part. He's slim, dressed in dark clothes and a man-with-no-name kind of black hat. His eyes are rather large and overbeetled by a single line of extremely dark brows. As his wife, Dorothy Malone also looks good, as good as she ever has. Neither is an outstanding performer. Stevens isn't particularly expressive. He glares more than usual when he's supposed to be aroused in some way, but his style is cautious, akin to that of David Janssen, and seems more suited to a cool medium like television than to feature films. I could never understand Dorothy Malone's appeal, nor her long career. She's never embarrassingly bad. It's just that it seems that she and the viewer are both very aware of the fact that she's acting in a movie. Barton McClane is the main heavy and he does a schtick that was already old twenty years earlier. All the usual conventions are followed in the dialog. ("Go ahead -- reach for it.")
But the visuals are impressive in their shabby way. The bar, for instance. It's not one of those fancy bars with a stage and a band, or a big mirror on the wall, and a bartender wearing a ruffled white shirt with sleeve garters and a vest. It's a crummy joint. It looks real. The bar itself is no more than a couple of planks laid across a row of barrels. Everyone looks properly dusty, if not outright filthy. The men's shirts are sweated through and grimy, and their faces are dark with a patina of soil. (Even the hero's.) The story isn't easy to dismiss either. A boy sees his father killed and decides to rid society of its bad people. A stint in the Civil War army gives him his first taste of killing, an act that disquiets him but seems to draw him. His next job is that of law keeper in a small western town. He kills when necessary -- strictly in accordance with cheap movie formulae. (Two men stalk towards one another on an empty street.) But as the number of killings mount, they take their toll on his character, so that he begins to drink and abuses innocent people. He becomes a human wreck, ridden by a self-loathing he can't seem to understand. By the end he's killed an innocent man and is himself shot down by a friend.
Cheaply done, yes, but it raises questions of some importance. What is the psychological toll on the agent of social control? Is it possible, say, for a modern soldier to initiate a mass killing of enemy prisoners without being certifiably mad? And it poses a problem raised in Plato's "Republic." Who will guard the guardians? It's a rather touching story, like watching a Greek tragedy played out on the screen, in the form of a second-feature Western with over-the-hill actors.