SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

bsmith5552 "The Silver Whip" was I'm sure, a vehicle for up and coming star Robert Wagner whom 20th Century Fox was grooming for stardom. It co-starred him with two of the studio's top leading men of the day, Dale Robertson and Rory Calhoun.Wagner plays Jess Harker a disgruntled but ambitious stagecoach driver who is not getting his due. He is driving a local run with a mule team. He longs to drive the main line coach. When he threatens to leave for greener pastures, his girl Kathy Riley (Kathleen Crowley) and two-gun shotgun guard Race Crim (Robertson) arrange for him to be transferred to the main line in spite of dispatcher Luke Bowen's (James Millican) apprehensions.The stage is to carry a large gold shipment which outlaw Slater (John Kellogg) overhears in the saloon. He races to the relay station to meet up with his gang and rob the coach. When the stage arrives at the relay station, Race suspects something and tells Jess to move the stage out of harm's way. Jess disobeys and remains. Following a gunfight with the gang, they make off with the loot.When Race's girlfriend Waco (Lola Albright) and Uncle Ben (Bert Mustin) are killed, Rice is filled with rage. He takes off after the outlaws while Jess joins up with Sheriff Tom Davisson's (Calhoun) posse. They catch up with one of the outlaws (Ian MacDonald) and take him prisoner in spite of Race's desire to hang him on the spot. All of the other bandits were killed by Race except for Slater.Later, when Slater is captured, the townsmen form a lynch mob and convince Race to join them. Jess, meanwhile has hired on as Davisson's deputy and is left in charge of the prisoners. The mob storms the jail and..............................................................................The film was not one of the studio's big budget films of the year. It was filmed in glorious black & white just as the wide screen CinemaScope process was coming in. Robertson is quite good as he goes from confident law abiding to hate filled vigilante. Calhoun has little to do and Wagner does OK as the young Jess. Watch for sagebrush veterans George Chesboro, John Doucette and Edmund Cobb as members of the lynch mob.

a_chinn Based on a novel from the author of "Shane" and "Monte Walsh" comes a much less substantial of western, but an entertaining one none-the-less. Robert Wagner plays a young cowboy who's getting restless in his small town, so to keep him from becoming a no-good drifter the local stagecoach owner hires him as an armed guard for a large gold shipment. After the stagecoach is robbed, young hotheaded Wagner learns from the stagecoach driver (Dale Robertson) and from the sheriff (Rory Calhoun) there are two kinds of justice and he has to decide which one is right. In the hands of a director like George Stevens, this story had the potential to be something really smart, but instead it's merely a diverting western that will entertain fans of sagebrush tales.

zardoz-13 Harmon Jones' "The Silver Whip" is apt to be forgotten these days, but this horse opera is pretty good. The cast is a stellar one with Rory Calhoun as the stalwart sheriff, Dale Robertson as the vengeance driven stagecoach guard, and Robert Wagner as a young man learning the ropes of responsibility. Apart from its black & white cinematography, this Twentieth Century Fox western foreshadowed one of the studio's best westerns "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" when an outlaw with no place to run leaps off high rocks to plunge into a lake below. "Shane" novelist Jack Schaefer wrote the source novel "First Blood" that this above-average western was adapted from by "North West Mounted Police" scenarist Jesse L. Lasky Jr. penned. The casting of Robertson as the villain distinguishes this otherwise minor western. The last quarter hour of the action foreshadowed the John Wayne movie "Rio Bravo." "You sure never know what a kid's got inside of him," the manager of the stagecoach station observes after the Wagner hero proves his ability to follow orders and live up to his responsibility. Harmon Jones never lets the action slacken in this concise 73-minute western. Good dialogue.

bux Wagner, Calhoun, and Robertson-a fine cast in a smoothly directed action/drama from the novel by Jack Schaefer(also wrote "Shane" 1953). The supporting cast of familiar faces, including Albright, Millican, and MacDonald round out this superior effort. If there is a fault in this one, it is the toned-down ending. The chance to really pack a punch is thrown away for a happily ever after conclusion. Too bad. But it is still a great watch.