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This is one of my favorite made for TV movies from the early nineties with one of my favorite heroes from the seventies (Richard Thomas as John Boy Walton) playing the real life felon Richard Farley, who now sits on Death Row in San Quentin. The gorgeous then twenty-seven-year-old Brooke Shields does a commendable job in her first genuinely decent acting role as the heroine Laura Black, but Emmy award winner Richard Thomas is superb as Laura’s creepy stalker who turns violent.

This is my favorite Western of all time, with The Magnificent Seven (also directed by John Sturges) and High Noon rounding out the top three on my list. Last Train From Gun Hill is probably the best overlooked film of the 1950s, but the movie is as riveting as any A-list offering of 1959 with the possible exceptions of Ben-Hur, North By Northwest, Rio Bravo, Some Like It Hot, Room At the Top, Pillow Talk, Suddenly Last Summer, A Summer Place, and The Diary of Anne Frank. It certainly belongs in the top ten of that year. Two-time Academy Award winner Anthony Quinn gives the best performance of his excellent career in this movie, and Kirk Douglas and Carolyn Jones are nothing short of superb as the widowed Marshall seeking justice for his murdered spouse and the one lone citizen (who is also Quinn’s mistress) willing to help him in a town filled with arrogant bystanders and ruthless gunslingers beholden to rancher Quinn, the richest man of Gun Hill, who not only owns the massive tract of land surrounding it but much of the town itself. This is one of the best screenplay adaptions under 100 minutes that I’ve ever seen. The legendary Edith Head designed the costumes, the great Dimitri Tiomkin composed the score, and James Poe wrote the script based on a novella written by Les Crutchfield, who created the Gunsmoke television series. The producer was Hal Wallis who years earlier won the Best Picture Oscar for producing Casablanca. There was even a genuine P&O train used for long shots and closeups. Earl Holliman and Brian G. Hutton (who later directed Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare) and Brad Dexter provide fine supporting roles, particularly Holliman, Quinn’s spoiled, racist son who is the chief culprit responsible for the horrific assault and demise of the Lawman’s lovely Cherokee wife, portrayed by a former Miss Israel named Ziva Rodann. LTFGH was a groundbreaking Western for its time as it dealt with racial prejudice and the complexities of human nature in just as a profound and unique way as another great post-World War 2 flick Bad Day At Black Rock, also directed by Sturges. BDABR is considered the one great Western that takes place well into the twentieth century. Last Train takes place at the turn of the century in 1900, as evidenced by the portraits of McKinley and Roosevelt shown in both interior and exterior shots. I wouldn’t want to ruin the anticipation for readers who have yet to watch this but the proverbial good does indeed triumph over evil even if there are ten dead bodies by the film’s stunning end. Well worth repeated viewings for the careful attention to period detail, the fabulous acting, and some of the best dialogue ever scripted depicting the Old West.