If you’ve seen any number of Westerns, you have seen that familiar opening shot of cowboys on horseback riding below, around, or over a camera. Samuel Fuller’s 1957 film “Forty Guns” is no different, as it starts above to see a long line of cowboys on horseback riding towards a small coach with three men on it. As they zoom past the wagon, the camera cuts to underneath the coach as the horseback riders kick up dust as they storm past the three men. What makes this opening unique is at the lead of this line of forty men on forty horses, most likely carrying forty guns, is a woman dressed in black on a white stallion. This is Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) a land baron who runs more than just her land. The town of Tombstone also lives in fear under her thumb and that of the gun of her little bully of a brother, Brockie (John Ericson).
We catch up with the three men on the wagon, Griff Bonell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers, Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix). Griff after earning a reputation as a gun for hire is looking to start a new life with his brothers, but shortly after getting to town he is confronted with the drunk Brockie and his gang as they are shooting up the town. Taking down Brockie with only a hard look, an even harder walk and pistol butt to the head, Griff learns who really runs this town. After the speediest of speedy trials, Jessica Drummond takes her brother back home leaving the man he killed in cold blood unavenged.
Griff reluctantly takes on a law enforcement role along with Wes, they purposefully leave Chico out who is hot and ready for action. Griff faces off against Jessica for the first time and her banquet table of men as he serves a warrant. Fuller takes this opportunity to further enforce the power of Jessica as the warrant is passed through over a dozen hands before it makes it way to Jessica at the head of the table Then as she orders her men out of the room, we get a one-on-one verbal fencing match that rivals one of Stanwyck’s previous battle of words from 1944, Billy Wilder’s classic “Double Indemnity”. From caressing Griff’s Peacemaker, to telling her, “I’m sure you’re sure.” Thus begins the central conflict, Jessica looking to give up everything for Griff and Griff struggling to give up everything for her. There are several more subplots and love stories that tend to overstuff the 80 minute run time, but every scene with Stanwyck is gold. She simply steals every scene, whether doing her own stunts like being dragged by a horse (apparently 3 times before Fuller got the shot he wanted) or using only her words and her checkbook to drive a man to suicide. Sullivan does his best to keep up, but it looks like exactly that, him just keeping up with Stanwyck.
What I found mind-blowing about this film was the multiple parallels to the 1993 George P. Cosmatos film “Tombstone” written by Kevin Jarre. There is some of the above mentioned moments like: three brothers, one a former law-dog looking to start a new life but becoming entangled with the local outlaws, a headstrong unconventional woman as a love interest, a shooting at a wedding, an ambush near a corral, one of the brothers dying, a forbidden love, some of the costumes are similar, and hell, the name of the town is Tombstone. Just saying these filmmakers owed some money to Samuel Fuller. But again this film is filled with so many plot elements it may have been easy to compare it to other Westerns of the time or since. However nothing can take away the solid filmmaking involved to make “Forty Guns”, even despite the hasty run to the finish line of a sightly weak ending, it’s still a deserving entry among the other classics by directors with names like Ford, Hawks, Peckinpah, Leone and Eastwood.
