Samuel Fuller was one of American cinema's true mavericks who eventually found a comfortable base at 20th Century-Fox, turning out a series of lurid melodramas that later achieved cult status, including this stylishly photographed CinemaScope western. Barbara Stanwyck (slightly too old) plays a ruthless Arizona rancher who is a law unto herself, until marshal Barry Sullivan (who hasn't killed a soul in ten years) turns up. It's all good fun, and, in its fairly short running time, not a second is wasted.

An authoritarian rancher rules an Arizona county with her private posse of hired guns. When a new Marshall arrives to set things straight, the cattle queen finds herself falling for the avowedly non-violent lawman. Both have itchy-fingered brothers, a female gunman enters the picture, and things go desperately wrong.