This fine grim western bears the hallmarks of its uncredited director, the great Don Siegel, who took over from Robert Totten after Totten fell out with star Richard Widmark. The credit was given to that alias agreed by the Directors Guild, one Allen Smithee (this was, in fact, the first feature to bear the name). Widmark is once again compulsively watchable as a former gunman turned marshal whose presence is an uncomfortable reminder of a town's grim history. Lena Horne is brilliantly cast as his woman - not a mention of her colour - and John Saxon and Carroll O'Connor are notable in support. This may be too downbeat and slow for many tastes, but it's always interesting, and the casting of Widmark and Horne makes it quite a collector's item.

In the turn-of-the century Texas town of Cottonwood Springs, marshal Frank Patch is an old-style lawman in a town determined to become modern. When he kills drunken Luke Mills in self-defense, the town leaders decide it's time for a change. That ask for Patch's resignation, but he refuses on the basis that the town, on hiring him, had promised him the job for as long as he wanted it. Afraid for the town's future and even more afraid of the fact that Marshal Patch knows all the town's dark secrets, the city fathers decide that old-style violence is the only way to rid themselves of the unwanted lawman.