Review of High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane

This film essentially begins one year after its predecessor left off with "Will Kane" (Lee Majors) and his wife "Amy Kane" (Katherine Cannon) riding a wagon back into the town of Hadleyville to purchase some horses for his ranch. Once there he meets a former convict he once knew named "Ben Irons" (David Carradine) who asks to purchase the horses he had just bought. Although a tense moment erupts when one of Ben's colleagues named "Harlan Tyler" (Tracey Walter) doesn't like Will's refusal, the situation is diminished once he realizes who he is dealing with. Unfortunately, things quickly get out of hand when the new town marshal "J. D. Ward" (Pernell Roberts) is shown a wanted poster with Ben Iron's name on it. Yet, even though Will assures Marshal Ward that Ben was in prison during this time and couldn't have possibly committed the crime, the marshal insists on tracking him down and killing him. Knowing this, Will soon realizes that he has no other option than to somehow bring Ben back into town to testify in his own behalf. Ironically, this pleases the marshal who sees an opportunity to add to his fame and fortune by killing both Ben and Will at the same time. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that-as is often the case-this sequel failed to live up to the same standard as its lofty predecessor with Lee Majors' portrayal of Will Kane being clearly inferior to that of Gary Cooper's performance 28 years earlier. Likewise, Katherine Cannon didn't have nearly the same on-screen presence as Grace Kelly either. But then, very few actresses could have anyway. Be that as it may, even though this film didn't quite rise to the same level as its predecessor, it still had enough solid acting, decent action and a fair amount of suspense to keep things interesting and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.