La diligencia de los presos

Colour had been an established feature of the western genre since the early fifties, so 'Convict West' represents an unusual departure for being in black & white at so late a date. The Utah landscapes are deliberately bleak, the composition is very horizontal, the interiors bare and it betrays its sixties provenance in the frequent use of zooms.

One of the final films of veteran director Lesley Selander, scripted by classic noir scenarist Daniel Mainwaring and one of the very few films in which Harry Lauter was allowed to play a hero. Woman are in the thick of it: one of the first casualties being a young female stagecoach passenger shot in the back while fleeing by a trigger-happy hoodlum, while Hanna Landy cuts a formidable figure as a European matriarch who's quick on the trigger.