Return of the Gunfighter

Plot synopsis:
An old gunslinger Ben Wyatt (Robert Taylor) is released from prison after five years. He meets Lee Sutton (Chad Everett), who is on the run for killing a man in a gunfight. Wyatt finds that his close friends the Domingos have been killed. He takes Sutton, who is weak from being wounded in the gunfight, to find Anisa Domingo (Ana Martin), the daughter of Wyatt's slain friends. Wyatt agrees to let Anisa help him find her parent's killers.
The three ride toward Lordsburg. Sutton leaves them to go to his family's ranch. He and Anisa say goodbye but hope to see each other again. With Anisa's help, Wyatt finds the men responsible and they are Sutton's brothers. Wyatt kills one in a street gunfight in self-defense.
Lee finds that his older brother, Clay (Lyle Bettger), killed Anisa's parents. Lee leaves the ranch for Lordsburg to free Wyatt, who is in jail for the gunfight. Together, they defeat Clay and his thugs to save Anisa from being killed as the only witness to Clay's murders.

Tags: revenge, murder

Review:
The Weary Gunfighter.
Probably the best role Robert Taylor had in the last five years of his life was in this made for television western, Return of the Gunfighter.
Though no new dramatic trails are broken here, Taylor is just right for the part of a character very much like Gregory Peck's Jim Ringo in The Gunfighter.Unlike Peck who's returned to a wife and child he abandoned for the wild ways of his youth, Taylor has no family.
We meet him after he cashes out of a poker game after catching one of the players cheating.
When the cheat objects and draws on him, Taylor shoots him down and just mutters "why won't they leave me alone." He's just tired of it all, but it turns out his skill is needed by an old friend Rodolfo Hoyos who's being forced off his land.
Taylor is summoned but arrives too late.He does pick up a traveling companion of sorts in young gun Chad Everett who's got three mean brothers on his trail.
Let's say that the two of them help each other in their situations, though for Everett it does cause a crisis of conscience as you'll see if you watch the film.And watch it you should.
Robert Taylor liked doing westerns, you can see it in his performances in them.
He made fun of the 'iron jockstrap' parts like Ivanhoe, but he loved going west.
Personally I think he should have concentrated on them in the sixties or looked for a big budget television series like his ex-wife Barbara Stanwyck had.Taylor's chief nemesis is Lyle Bettger the man who killed his friend and others.
Bettger once again brings one of his sadistic psychos to the screen and effectively.
This one does have a healthy respect for Taylor's reputation and skill as he tries to tell young punk John David Chandler, when Chandler seems to buffalo Taylor in a saloon.
The fact that Chandler had several friends with him, kind of stacked the deck.
It's a scene very similar to one that John Wayne and George Kennedy did in The Sons of Katie Elder.This was the second of two films that Chad Everett did with Robert Taylor and he always spoke of Taylor's kindness to him as a young player and his generosity in that he never worried about Everett stealing any scenes.
Taylor was back at MGM for this final film with them, the studio where he held the longest contract in screen history.
Had Return of the Gunfighter been made 10 year earlier, it surely would have gotten a theatrical release..
Ravished Taylor is excellent..
Robert Taylor aged more strangely than any of the stars.
From the beautiful young man that ravished Garbo in "Camille", he emerged from World War 2 ravished himself.
I don't know a lot about him, but I suspect his war experiences had a major emotional effect on him that really showed in his face.
Not only did he look worn, he also became far more interesting as an actor.
Here he is 56, in the last two years of his life, and his craggy face and striking blue eyes portray a world-weariness that carries tragic weight.
He is that often seen Western character, the famous gunfighter tired of killing.
I believe Clint Eastwood must have based his character in "Unforgiven" on Taylor's performance here.
Taylor makes this fairly ordinary Western extraordinary..
Chad Everett?!.
I'm sorry, but I just couldn't get over seeing Chad Everett in this western film.
Now I don't think he did a bad job, but seeing this handsome actor who is most closely associated with playing a TV doctor as a gunfighter took me by surprise--as I grew up watching him on "Medical Center".The film is one of Robert Taylor's last films.
As he was older and more haggard, the writers did a good job in dealing with this instead of pretending he still was the man with matinée idol good looks.
Here, he plays an aging gunfighter who is sick and tired of the violence--and he actually tried NOT to fight and would back down if possible.
I liked this aspect of the film and it kept me watching--as well as my wife, who is NOT a fan of the genre.However, aside from both Taylor and Everitt doing a god job, the rest of the film is very, very standard.
It's the usual big nasty guy with money versus the innocent farmers/ranchers.
While I don't give the film super-high marks, it is well acted and interest interesting and a decent late appearance for Taylor..
I'm tired of death - It keeps on following me..
Return of the Gunfighter is directed by James Neilson and adapted to screenplay by Robert Buckner from a story by Burt Kennedy.
It stars Robert Taylor, Chad Everett, Ana Martín, Mort Mills, Lyle Bettger, John Davis Chandler and Michael Pate.
Music is by Hans Salter and the Metrocolor cinematography is by Ellsworth Fredericks.Aging gunfighter Ben Wyatt (Taylor) receives a request to go aid an old friend who's in trouble.
Upon arrival at the family ranch he finds that both his friend and his wife have been killed.
Locating the surviving daughter, he teams up with hot headed drifter Lee Sutton (Everett) and sets about avenging the murder of his friend and the girls parents.By this time Robert Taylor was winding down his career and his life, 1967 would see him depart from the Western genre of film, how splendid to find he doesn't in the slightest disgrace himself here.His character is weather worn, a gunfighter tired of all the killing, of looking over his shoulder all the time.
This proves to be perfect for Taylor, who gives the role a believable sense of pathos, the passing of time and that fate will not leave him alone hangs heavy.
Breaking it down it's a straight forward narrative, where the one time bad guy is called on to use his deadly skills for some good, to rid the plains of some nasty sorts.
The relationship with the young upstart (Everett the whitest teeth in the west) builds nicely, leading to a finale that attacks the emotions of the major players.There's a healthy quotient of action, decently staged by the tech crew, the Old Tuscon locations are nicely photographed, while support players impact with credit on the story.
It's not all plain sailing, Salter's score is sometimes well in keeping with the era, but at other times it comes off like a Sccoby-Doo piece.
Susension of disbelief is of course required, none more so than when Ana Martín goes about the town pretending to be a boy and everyone falls for it - she is simply too pretty to remotely pass as male, and the appearance of Butch and Sundance in the plot is most odd.Yet it's a lovely Oater this, feeling more like one from the 1950s than the tail end of the 60s.
Highly recommended to Taylor fans and fans of traditional Western fare.
Characters Got In the Way of A Good Movie.
I'm not sure if "Return of the Gunfighter" is a sequel to "The Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck but if it is it's a far cry from the original.The overall story was fair enough and could even be said that it was good.
Ben Wyatt (Robert Taylor) is a retired, yet still fast, gunfighter that's out to find justice for his friend Luis Domingo.
He uses Luis's daughter, Anisa (Ana Martin), to find his killers.
Along the way he befriends Lee Sutton (Chad Everett) who becomes an essential character.It would have been an OK to good movie if it weren't for Anisa and Lee Sutton.
They were two very simple characters that I found nauseating.
Anisa, the simplest of all, was the naïve, protected, childlike character with the features to match.
She had to be the cleanest, softest-skinned Mexican-farmer's daughter ever.
That just helped complete the innocent virginal image.Lee Sutton was a simpleton of a different kind.
He was the young, dumb, full of you-know-what kind of simpleton.
I will say that he partially evolved by movie's end but not enough to shake off that first impression."Return of the Gunfighter" is about gunfighting after all just like kung fu movies are about kung fu.
It's almost as if the characters get in the way of the true objective.
No characters were particularly captivating, they were all just a means to an end..
Tired western.
Apparently Metro Goldwyn Mayer, while giving the movie a theatrical release overseas, sent this western directly to television in North America.
It's pretty easy to see why MGM wasn't totally confident that the movie would attract domestic audiences.
The script is the main problem.
The story is made up of many elements and plot turns you will have seen in countless westerns before; I bet even audiences in 1967 found the story clichéd.
Not only that, the script insults the audience by taking more than half of the movie to set everything up; there's no reason why it should have taken so long for this creaky story to define everything.
Also, that first half of the movie is pretty dull, with almost no action or anything else that might be considered lively.
The second half of the movie is a bit more energetic, but it's too little and too late.
Why the present owners of the movie thought it was worth a DVD release through their on demand video line, I cannot say..
Robert Taylor is wonderful as the aging gunfighter Ben Wyatt..
Robert Taylor was always the perfect cowboy, and this role is probably one of the best roles he had in his later years.
Ben Wyatt is an aged gunfighter who is just sick and tired of the death and destruction caused by a "reputation." Just out of prison he is called upon to help and old friend, and although he is reluctant, he agrees.
Upon his arrival he finds that his friend is dead, the victim of a land grab.
The only survivor is his daughter, Annissa.
He sets out with the girl to get revenge for the deaths, and along the way meets Lee Sutton, (Chad Everett)a wounded gunslinger, and takes him along begrudgingly.
The pursuit of the bad guys leads to the real killers, and ultimately he avenges the friends and helps the girl move on.
Watching Taylor, his face lined and worn by age, is truly magnificent.
Just the sight of him on a horse, his blue eyes still glowing beneath the Stetson, is worth the watching of a consummate professional.
It is a shame that he did not live long enough to do more character roles like this one..
Robert Taylor Exits Gracefully.
Return of the Gunfighter" was not Robert Taylor's last film.
He did a couple of B productions in Europe, working into 1968.
In October of 1968 he had a lung removed and did not work again.
Nonetheless, "Gunfighter" is a suitable farewell.
Taylor plays a reformed gunfighter, recently released from prison after serving 5 years for a bogus murder conviction.
The character, Ben Wyatt, seeks only to live in peace but events make this impossible.
When a friend and his wife are murdered, Wyatt must see that justice prevails.The meat of the story is the relationship between Wyatt and young gunslinger Lee Sutton, played by Chad Everett.
A secondary motif is Wyatt's love for his "niece," Anisa, played by Ana Martin.
It isn't a love triangle at all but a passing of the flame to the younger generation.
Everett, a happy-go-lucky young man, learns to be a responsible adult by confronting the villain, Clay Sutton (Lyle Bettger), his older brother.
Under Wyatt's influence, he faces evil and wins the young girl's love.Everett is charming and handsome as Lee Sutton.
His self-centered playfulness is gradually replaced by a sense of morality and accountability.
Ana Martin's acceptance of him as a suitor comes only as he matures.
Martin had a better role than women usually do in westerns and handles it satisfactorily although not memorably.
The supporting cast is uniformly professional and effective.The picture, however, belongs to Taylor.
He is still handsome and his lined face conveys emotion with quiet authority.
As others have said, no one rode a horse the way he did--his straight yet graceful posture, his easy control, his oneness with the animal.
The pretty boy of the thirties has become a superb actor without ever being showy or "going Hollywood." It is disturbing, however, to watch his labored breathing, knowing what caused it.
The last scene, where he walks away from the camera, alone in the street, is very moving..
For Robert Taylor Fans Only.
I like this movie, but I'm a Robert Taylor fan and this is a good solid role for him.
If you don't like Robert Taylor, this is pretty cookie cutter.Here's what I liked:Nice job building the mystique about pistolero Ben Wyatt.Robert Taylor does his usual excellent work replaying the Jimmy Ringo character from the original "Gunfighter".
I won't criticize this for "ripping off" the 1950 film, since they pay tribute to the original film in their title.
I liked the main henchman Sundance, played by John David Chandler.
He had a real Steve Buscemi kind of look to him.
He was also one of the four weird Hammond brothers in "Ride the High Country".
He was also the bounty hunter at the end of "The Outlaw Josey Wales" whom Josey tells, "Dyin' ain't much of a livin' boy", before shooting him down.Nice use of Mexico and Mexicans.Here's what I didn't like:Weak heavy.No comic reliefNothing new added to clichéd plot.Riddled with plot holes and implausibilities, not worth detailing.