Peter McGarry

Directed at a terrific pace by Roy Huggins, later mastermind of some of the best TV westerns, this is a surprisingly tough and gripping entertainment Randolph Scott turns in a strong performance prefiguring some of his later fine work with Budd Boetticher and providing more substance than usual in his westerns of the early fifties. The film benefits also from lovely Donna Reed shaping up a heroine with some fire about her and grand support from an ever evil Lee Marvin and a nicely whimsical Frank Faylen. From this point, the Scott westerns got better and better with Man in the Saddle and Riding Shotgun leading up nicely to the Boetticher era punctuated by the marvellous Decision at Sundown and Seven Men from Now. Scott, for me, was the greatest cowboy star of them all and his final picture Ride the High Country provided a fittingly nostalgic tribute

This is so gloriously awful that it's unmissable! The script is totally barmy, the special effects are special only because they are so hideously bad, and the acting makes you wonder who's pulling their strings. The film creaks in every corner and by today's standards is hugely politically incorrect in its use of dwarfs and servile women who seem to spend all their time climbing up and down a rope ladder in the evil doctor's mountain lair. It's an experience every film buff should be obliged to undergo.