Unidos en la venganza

Here's another of the Paramount Shaky A westerns from the 1950s, when B westerns were no longer profitable, but true A westerns were very chancy. So they got Technicolor, another 20 minutes of screen time to tell a story, some actors who could also get hied for non-western work.

This one might be called "The life and death of Jesse James", since the Great Missouri Raid makes up a small bit of it as we watch the whole gang of ex-Quatrill Raiders from the end of the Civil to the death of Jesse, as portrayed by MacDonald Carey. It's not their fault they were villains; no one gave them a chance, particularly nasty old Ward Bond, who pursued them like they had pled the Fifth before HUAC. The writing by Frank Gruber is good, if fanciful; the direction by Gordon Douglas is plebian. Ray Rennahan's camerawork is excellent. That's hardly surprising, since he had been a leading expert on it since the 1920s. The net result is good, although I've seen the story so many times in so many versions that I'm bored by it. When are they making another one about Billy the Kid?