ThiefHott Too much of everything

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

happytrigger-64-390517 As I love American B movies, Phil Karlson has always been one of my favorite director, with tough thrillers and westerns with very nasty fights and anti corruption subjects ("The Phenix City Story", "Walking Tall"). And always great tough actors, William Bishop, George Montgomery (wahh "The Texas Rangers"), John Payne, Richard Widmark and Joe Don Baker, around 15 B masterpieces. Some are still very hard to find.Twenty five years ago, I really wanted to see "Gunman's Walk", absolutely invisible. And the only way was to go to a museum and pay for the projection. This is how I discovered this pure treasure, a very strong story of a father facing a psychopathic son, incredibly played by Tab Hunter, completely possessed by madness, he is really scary. Lot of tense psychological details. The cinemascope by Charles Lawton Jr is pure genius and inventive, it is quite rare in westerns.When producer Harry Cohn saw that movie, "he was literally crying". And Harry Cohn said to Phil Karlson : "you're going to be the biggest director in this business and I'm going to make sure you are." Harry Cohn went to Phoenix, Arizona and died. (Phil Karlson in his only interview I know in the super book "King of the B's").

DKosty123 I was surprised when this was shown on TCM for the first time the impact this film has. This is one of Van Heflin's better performances. Tab Hunter is cast well as one of his sons. James Darren is another one though his role is more secondary than Hunter.Ed Platt (Chief of Control on Get Smart) has a very good role as a lawyer. This movie seems stocked with good character actors. The script has Heflin as the aged gunfighter with two sons who now owns a big spread outside of town. He teaches his sons the benefits of using guns. This teaching back fires on him in an interesting way. The surprise here is the strength of the ending.Heflin is not the hero of the old Westerns here. His character is deeper and he does things that hero's don't do. This is a really well done film.

bkoganbing Van Heflin heads the cast of Gunman's Walk and he's the head of the local Ponderosa in his part of the west. He's not as noble as Ben Cartwright or as mean Rufe Ryker in Shane. He's got two sons, one good and one bad, played by James Darren and Tab Hunter.These guys pretty much do as they please even in these relatively civilized times. For instance Tab Hunter and Van Heflin both wear their six guns to town even though there's a law against it now. Reason being is that they were there before the law and they don't answer to it even if the sheriff is an old friend in Robert F. Simon.Hunter is taking a lot of the wrong values from Heflin. When he rides an Indian ranch hand off a cliff in pursuit of a wild horse, he's brought up on murder charges. This sets off a chain of events that result in tragedy.In the meantime younger son James Darren's courtship of half Sioux maiden Kathryn Crosby whose brother was the one Hunter rode off the cliff is setting off some other issues with Heflin. The Indians are living on the reservation now with a rare honest Indian agent Edward Platt looking out for them. Still Heflin remembers nothing but the bad old days except when he needs them as extra hands.Van Heflin never gave a bad performance in any film he was in. But this film does belong to Tab Hunter who breaks from teen idol mode into a character role of depth.As for the film it might best be compared to the Robert Taylor/John Cassavetes western from the previous year, Saddle The Wind. There's lots of similarities in the relationship between Taylor and Cassavetes and Heflin and Hunter. And the ending is the same.

Martin Bradley An outstanding and unjustly neglected western from that fine genre director Phil Karlson who, if he never quite made it to the front ranks, could nevertheless be counted upon to produce first rate and thought-provoking entertainments of which this is one. Karlson had no problem juggling the pieces' myriad themes, (the Freudian relationship between a martinet father and his hot-headed son, miscegenation and racial prejudice, gun culture and the changing ways of the West), without ever sacrificing the solid entertainment value of what is essentially a good old-fashioned western.As the father piling all his affection on the wrong son, Van Heflin is as reliable as ever. The real surprise of the picture, however, is Tab Hunter as the son who both hates and idolizes his father. Hunter was never much of an actor but here, cast against type as the villain of the piece, he manages to bring depth and feeling to the role. Perhaps he located the misfit nature of the character. After all, being gay in Hollywood in the fifties and living a life that was fundamentally a lie, surely can't have been easy.