After cutting his teeth on TV shows like Gunsmoke and The Rifleman, Sam Peckinpah made his debut as a movie director with this often gripping psychological western, which concentrates on the interaction of its quartet of key characters before it bursts into violent life on the streets of a ghost town. As the rose between three thorns, Maureen O'Hara is excellent, but it's the posturing between gunmen Brian Keith, Chill Wills and Steve Cochran that holds the attention. The direction is tentative at times, but AS Fleischman's script, from his own novel, is solid as a rock.

Ex-army officer accidentally kills a woman's son, tries to make up for it by escorting the funeral procession through dangerous Indian territory.