User reviews

Audie Murphy was reportedly furious when he learned that "Showdown" would be in black and white for budget reasons. But the b&w seems appropriate for this western because Murphy's character is the perfect film noir hero. He usually played a gunfighter with a troubled past, a lawman, or a combination of the two but here he is Chris Foster, an ordinary cow puncher who just wants to collect his pay and celebrate with his pal Bert Pickett (Charles Drake). Because of Bert's drunken misbehavior, he and Chris have to go to "jail" which in the little New Mexico town means a post in the middle of the street with chains bolted to it and an iron collar for the prisoners. It is a very visually arresting (if you will pardon the expression) image. Also chained to the post is the notorious outlaw Lavalle (Harold J. Stone) and his gang which includes Foray (L.Q. Jones) and Caslon (Skip Homeier). When Lavalle and friends escape, Chris and Bert have to go with him putting them on the run from the law. From there, Chris tries to keep himself and his friend alive - not to mention clear their names - as they attempt to buy their way out with some bonds stolen from an express office. There is even, if not a femme fatale, a cynical dame who could help the two men out of their trouble but is unable to trust what Chris tells her. Now, if that's not a noir plot, I don't know what is. Noir, noir on the range. Not one of Audie's best, neither one of his worst (so far I haven't found a "worst"). But as always, Audie Murphy is a charismatic lead actor. The cinematographer is Ellis W. Carter. Location shooting was done at Lone Pine, California which is a good match for the film's setting in New Mexico, especially in the desert views.

Showdown finds Audie Murphy and Charles Drake who did a few films with Murphy as a pair of cowboy drifters coming to the town of Adonde to sell of the horse herd they've captured and for a little R&R. Drake gets in a poker game, gets drunk and stupid, and both wind up chained to a town may pole like post in the middle of the town main street. Also chained there is the town drunk Strother Martin and Harold J. Stone and his outlaw gang. The town has no jail and the pole is like the stocks in the village square in the colonial times.

Adonde wishes that they did invest in a jail after Stone breaks out taking Murphy and Drake with him and some money that the light fingered Drake lifted from the Express office. $12,000.00 in negotiable bonds. But he hides them and then it becomes a chess game between Murphy and Drake and Stone.

I won't go on with the plot, but it soon becomes apparent that the man Murphy's been riding with has a lot less character than he gave him credit for. In fact Drake's character is not unlike the one he played in the classic James Stewart western Winchester 73. Furthermore the girl he's been seeing Kathleen Crowley is not unlike Shelley Winters from that same film.

In fact this could have been a classic had Universal invested a little more money in script and direction. But at that time Audie Murphy's films were normally at the bottom of double bills in that last decade of them and Murphy was just serving out his contract.

Still the film has some grit to it with Murphy playing the only one in the film with any real character.

Murph Balked at the Non-Color Decision and Loudly Voiced it and Threatened to Walk but was Talked Out of it by His Agent.

This is one of the More Glum of Audie Murphy Westerns.

He was Aging and it Shows His 1963 Face and Frame Starting to Sprawl, just a Little.

But the War-Hero, Now a Veteran Screen Presence, still Manages to Impose and Intimidate Bad-Guys, and Lure Beautiful Women.

With His Unwavering Moral Compass and Sweet Looks.

Here, He Outwits a Snarling Psycho, Harold J. Stone, and His Pack of Dogs.

Punches His way out of Outnumbered Fisticuffs, and Takes to the Iron to Finish Off the Outlaws.

He is Totally Loyal to Charles Drake, a real Snake, as He Sides with His "Good Friend" until the End.

Kathleen Crowley's Beautiful Face is Caked with Make-Up and Mascara, False Eye-Lashes, and an Early Sixties Hair-Do. What were They Thinking?

The Movie has a Rich Supporting Cast.

The Film Features some Off-Beat Inclusions, like the "Iron May-Pole", and some Amped Violence that was Creeping its Way into Movies in the New Decade.

Overall, it is Underrated and Another Audie Murphy Western that is Put-Down and Ignored by Critics. But it's a Good One.

Ask those that Count, the Legions of Murph's Fans that are still Around Today.

Showdown is directed by R.G. Springsteen and written by Bronson Howitzer. It stars Audie Murphy, Kathleen Crowley, Charles Drake, Harold J. Stone, Skip Homeier, L. Q. Jones and Strother Martin. Music is by Hans J. Salter and cinematography by Ellis W. Carter.

Plot has Murphy as Chris Foster who has to get 12,000 dollars in stolen bonds from the ex-girlfriend of his partner, Bert Pickett (Drake), or the gang holding him hostage will kill him.

Filmed in black and white, something which didn't sit well with Murphy, this turns out to be a well photographed (the sumptuous back drop of the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine) low budget Oater of interesting ideas. The outdoor prison used here - criminals chained by neck collars to a pole in the center of town - is refreshingly original and a superb plot device that thrusts good guys (Chris and Bert) and bad guys together as a unit, for a while at least that is...

Trouble is, is that this is only a small section of the story which occurs at the pic's beginning. We get some exciting action and character laying foundations for the inevitable break out, and then it moves away from the jail scenario. The premise is so good one kind of hankers for much longer of this story angle, maybe even for the story to have been different and made this the bulk of the movie as a character piece - with the break out and subsequent held to ransom aspect in the last third. But I digress whilst forgetting this is a 1960s low budget job.

Narrative contains themes of addiction, tortured love and blind loyalty, which is credit to the writing of the wonderfully named Bronson Howitzer (really Ric Hardman!). However, the romantic thread bogs things down since it comes off as nonsense, with Crowley - as lovely as she looks - utterly unbelievable in the Western setting. Worse still is the head villain played by Stone, who not only makes preposterous decisions, he's also just not very villainous into the bargain. Still, Murphy is on good enough form and he's backed up by some notable genre performers.

A mixture of the usual good and bad for a Murphy 1960s Oater, but enough here to make it a comfortable recommendation to fans of star and genre. 6.5/10

I loved this movie. Having watched so many old westerns recently that lacked much realism, I found this to be quite a hard edged and grim atmospheric piece that I really enjoyed. Audie Murphy with his baby face can be very convincing and was perhaps a better actor than I previously remembered from when I was young, and I'm constantly having to remind myself that he was the most decorated American soldier of World War II. Kathleen Crowley,who I had forgotten about, was quite sexy in a mature way, and I grew to like her as her part went on. There's a great cast of old character actors who never fail to please in old westerns, Harold J. Stone, Skip Homier, L. Q. Jones, Strother Martin and Charles Drake. There's not a lot to not like I thought, although I kept thinking this would have been so much better in colour and wide screen which let it down just a little bit. I thought it was quite tense throughout, mainly brought about by the fact that Murphy is chased (and I love chase pictures) throughout the film by various characters and for the most part he has to outsmart his opponents and overcome them in spite of the fact that he rarely has the chance of acquiring a weapon. Very well made on what appears to be a low budget.

SHOWDOWN (1963) has extensive location shooting around Lone Pine, California at the foot of the Sierras. Because it was shot in black-and-white, however, ostensibly to save money, the picturesque locations are not seen to their best advantage the way they are in Murphy's color westerns from that era (e.g. HELL BENT FOR LEATHER and SEVEN WAYS FROM SUNDOWN, both 1960). Color cinematography would have given us something interesting to look at during the labored proceedings. It's a low-budget affair with a contrived script provided by "Bronson Howitzer," a curious pseudonym for Ric Hardman, a writer of TV westerns. The plot is one of those routine potboilers about a group of outlaws holding the hero and various people hostage in hopes of a big payoff. At too many points in the script, people engage in uncharacteristic behavior in order to keep the basic situation intact. Two innocent cowboys, Chris (Audie Murphy) and Bert (Charles Drake), are detained after a drunken saloon fight and chained to an outdoor post alongside desperate outlaws in a town that doesn't have a jail. When the outlaws break free, the two friends inexplicably flee instead of staying and trying to explain their situation. Bert (Charles Drake) even steals some banknotes, which he then uses to bargain for his and Chris's life after the outlaws grab them. Each subsequent chain of events arises from the outlaw boss (Harold J. Stone) letting one friend or the other go off on his own on a mission involving the money, even though no self-respecting gang leader would place such trust in his hostages or let them go off on their own so easily. These outlaws are neither very tough nor very smart.

Things get more complicated when Bert's purported girl, a saloon singer named Estelle, enters the picture. She has a couple of dramatic scenes, including an extended monologue, that must have made the actress (Kathleen Crowley) quite happy but tend to slow the movie down. Only when Chris is on his own against the remaining gang members in rugged terrain does the picture get interesting. Unfortunately, there are not enough of these scenes to save the movie. Murphy's very good in a patented role as a decent ordinary guy caught up in the machinations of lawbreakers, but he would have been better in color and with a more thought-out script. There's a sense here that the production was just a bit on the hurried side.

Strother Martin plays a town drunk and L.Q. Jones plays a silent member of the gang. Both are among the town's prisoners chained to the same post early in the film. They're seen in shots together but don't interact. These two actors would make a memorable team six years later as the squabbling "gutter trash" bounty hunters Coffer and T.C. in Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH.

According to "No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy," by Don Graham, Murphy was quite upset when he learned that SHOWDOWN was being filmed in black-and-white and almost stopped working. "I'm not gonna act," is how he put it. The producer eventually talked him into finishing the movie, but Murphy vowed, "This is the last picture I'm gonna do in black and white." It was.

(Regarding the filming of Lone Pine locations cited in the first paragraph, I should stress that those landscapes can look absolutely breathtaking in black-and-white when captured by a master cinematographer. Just look at classic movies like LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935), CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) and HIGH SIERRA (1941), to name three. But we're simply not going to see images like that in the kind of rush job we get in SHOWDOWN.)

"Neither one of you can make it alone.... maybe together you might make one good man... pull you apart ...it's like an oyster..... You're a couple of shells sharing one set of guts"

Things turn bad for a couple of drifting cowboys when they go into town to cash their pay.....real,real bad.

Excellent hard boiled Noir tale of the drifting cowboy hard luck trail with a very sinister edge. Some great massive landscapes position the claustrophobic anxiety and ultimate insignificance and futility of this nasty human story.

Audie gives one of his strongest performances and delivers some excellent patois dialogue full of cowboy logic and figuring. Chas Drake is great as the weak willed problem gambling pard.

Harold J stone is frightening and relentless as gang boss LaSalle and Skip Homier, is very disturbing as one of the stupid sadist henchman.

Strother Martin gives an excellent performance as pathetic town drunk Charlie Reeder and the scenes with his hard talking children are disturbingly frank.

Kathleen Crowley proves to be an excellent casting choice as pathetic ruined Estelle.

This is my favorite Audie Murphy western and I think one of his best films.

A rare Audie Murphy Western shot in black & white (I can only recall 2 other of his films shot the same way being The Quiet American & The Red Badge of Courage) from 1963 directed by R.G. Springsteen (he did a ton of Westerns for the big screen & TV). Murphy, who is a bronco buster, & his friend, a vet, are cashing out from a recent job in town but after a drunken fight (the friend likes booze a bit much), the sheriff locks them up both in the town square, chained to a pole along w/a bunch of other prisoners who have varying degrees of offenses under their collective belts. When the leader breaks the others free (in a scene which should be suspenseful but comes off as comedic like the chained up escapees from Woody Allen's Take the Money & Run), they stock up on guns & ammo & rob the local bank. Murphy & pal peel away from the pack but later run into the escaping gang where the vet barters for their lives w/a stack of government bonds he pilfered which he offers to cash for them in exchange for his & Murphy's lives. He goes into town, trailed by 2 of the leader's crew, & is brought back empty handed. It turns out the vet has an old honey on standby which he promised the funds to so Murphy is enlisted to get the funds back or make some moves which will save the day for all concerned. It's too bad the great location photography & tight running time is wasted on a story which falls apart as it chugs along but as was the case w/many of Murphy's Westerns; a lot of them were forgettable, w/only a handful worth remembering. Co-starring future Peckinpah vets, L.Q. Jones & Strother Martin w/Harold J. Stone wasted as the main heavy.

I always liked this western, it'd a great atmosphere and a solid plot. Pity it's underrated. Audie stars as a cowpoke, who along with Charles Drake, rides into a one horse town to collect their money before ending up imprisoned with outlaws, and when a breakout occurs they find themselves up to their neck in trouble. There's a strange kind of jail - a pole with chain shackling the prisoners. It adds a grim tone to the story, as does the black and white. I used to think that it should've been in colour, but I now think that monogram lends a certain noir-like element to it. There's also a grimness to it as well as some focus on the characters. Kathleen Crowley is really good as is Charles Drake and the villain who has a real menace. The locations are really good, the chase scenes are really nifty, particular liked the bit when Audie lassoes a sagebrush as he's riding the horse, causing dust to disorientate the baddie that's following him. Audie is really good here, reacts well to Kathleen Crowley's bitter tone, and shows some great athleticism and horsemanship.

That was not the first time that Audie Murphy and Charles Drake co starred: remember NO NAME ON THE BULLET and TO HELL AND BACK. And I am sure there were other features starring both. This one is a good early sixties western, made by a rough specialist, showing a good character portraits, rather moving, and bringing good scenes, shots, camera angles. This is not enough to make it exceptional but it is for me one of the best from RG Springsteen. Maybe after all RG Springsteen was a talented director who was just not ambitious enough to deliver many gems, or lucky enough to have good producers to deal with. So please, don't miss this gritty western, not the worst from Audie Murphy.

Enjoyed it for the most part but a few characters were aggravating (one due to the script, other due to their acting).

Drake's character...phew. That fella's the one "friend" some of us have, (or if lucky) HAD in our lives that's a guarantee trouble magnet. Of course, they somehow make sure you get involved... and always expect you to get them out of the trouble THEY always cause.

His character was such a PITA. Every opportunity he had to do the right thing, he chose poorly...until his last scene. Even then, it seemed he did it only to save the (hopeless) relationship with his girl.

Crowley's character... well it's the same one she's played in everything I've seen her in - besides one exception early in her career when she played a tomboy in a Lone Ranger episode.

PS - she's played the same character so much, she reminds me of being another actress - Patricia Barry.

Who too have played the same character in everything I've seen - except for 2 roles - a B/C level crime drama (light noir?) set around Staten Island early in her career (she and her dialogue delivery seemed so natural and at ease) and an outstanding Gunsmoke episode - "The Cabin", where she did such a great job, it's a shame to never seen her give another performance even close to that quality...

Wonder if during the 50's and 60's, producers would say "I need an actress that'll "overact". If I can't get Crowley, call Barry!"

Back to the movie - Enjoyed it overall.

Many familiar actors of the TV western genre from that era.

2 did stand out for me

Charles Horvath - think his dialogue with Stone near the end was the most I've seen him deliver, let alone the deepest. Felt sympathy for him wanting to just let Murphy go and get away because he knew what was coming but resigned himself to it nonetheless.

Carol Thurston - though her screen time was short, she looked just as she did playing the hopelessly in love gypsy girlfriend of the wrongly convicted outlaw in the Lone Ranger.

Can't believe she was dead within 6 years of this film, while still in her 40's.

Felt bad for the Murphy character who had to make the right choices not only for himself but for everyone else. He looked so beaten and sick of it all by the end.

BTW, not sure if the movie would've been any better shown in color. Think the B&W helped the dark, hopeless mood set for the hero.

Also - sure would've wanted to see the sheriff's face when he realized Murphy risked his life to bring back the bond money to the town who treated him so poorly.