Forty Guns (1957)

Forty Guns is the most rampantly sexualized Western ever made, and the most outrageous of Samuel Fuller's late-'50s B movies. Fuller's original title was "Woman with a Whip," referring to the hard-riding range baroness--Barbara Stanwyck, sporting silver hair and (most of the time) black, skintight man togs--who's "the boss of Cochise County" and a law unto herself. The forty guns are an army of pistoleros who accompany her just about everywhere, and Fuller misses no opportunity to exaggerate their macho assertiveness in black-and-white CinemaScope, whether thundering along the horizon or formed up on either side of a preposterously long dinner table with Stanwyck at its head. Barry Sullivan costars as a Wyatt Earp–like gunfighter who both threatens Stanwyck's empire and awakens her lust for something besides power. As one of his brothers, Gene Barry (soon to star in Fuller's mind-blowing Vietnam movie China Gate) enjoys a passionate liaison with a gunsmith's busty blond daughter (Eve Brent) whom he romances down the bore of a rifle--an image Jean-Luc Godard would memorialize in Breathless. In the relentlessly double-entendre dialogue and the blocking of scenes, everything takes on sexual overtones: power and impotence, political advantage and exclusion. Fuller and cameraman Joseph Biroc capture many sequences in single, minutes-long takes that often end in a death--and in one perverse instance, the revelation of a death that has occurred midway through without our knowing it. (It's a T.S. Eliot moment, though we won't insist on it.) Style is all in this movie, which will leave you either astonished or aghast. More likely, both. --Richard T. Jameson Amazon.com

Sudsy western...

Nothing more than a soap opera set firmly in the western genre, 'Forty Guns' is only worth a watch to diehard Fuller fans. The dialogue is flush with noir-era double entendre, true, but even that wears thin. The pacing and the acting are strictly second-fare, and while there are some interesting cinematographic moments, e.g., the tornado, the funeral, Fuller fails to seal the deal with character development, plot or tension. P.S.-- I'm not a huge Stanwyck fan, but I imagine the ending will prove embarrassing to those who are. June 11, 2008

SAMUEL FULLER, OPUS 11

***** 1957. Written, produced and directed by Samuel Fuller. Griff Bonnell and his two brothers arrive in Cochise county, a land ruled by Jessica Drummond and the forty gunmen who work for her. This brilliant movie is one of the high points of Samuel Fuller's filmography. Certain scenes with their explicit sadism announce the wave of the spaghetti westerns, scenes like the arrival of the twister or Wes Bonnell's funeral are even already part of Movie History. If you own a multizone DVD player, you should buy at Amazon.fr the zone 2 collector edition of FORTY GUNS. Three film historians, in very informative featurettes, will manage to convince you that every shots of FORTY GUNS teem with original ideas. Masterpiece. April 16, 2008

A Strange Western; Watch It In Widescreen

If you've never seen this film, I think you'll find it a bit different from most classic westerns. It's really more of a film noir, I thought, and I liked that angle. I say "film noir" because of feel. This western had stark black-and-white photography with tons of shadows and it had a dramatic scene near the end that was very noir-ish. I was very impressed with the ending, and that's all I will say as to not spoil it for others.

The DVD has the option of fullscreen or widescreen. Please consider the latter, because that is how it was presented: in "cinemascope," and you'll want to see photographer Joseph Birac's work in all its glory. This looks great!.

All the characters are pretty interesting. Barbara Stanwyck fans will be disappointed at her screen time. She is getting headlines here on this page, but she is not the leading character. To repeat, this is an odd story. I mean, how often does one see a tornado in the middle of a western movie? Some of the lines in here were quite profound, too, and some were uttered really stupidly. It's a curiosity piece, that's for sure.....but definitely worth watching if good photography and odd characters interest you. September 5, 2007

a strange western from a great director

Occasionally some of the great noir directors of the 40's and 50's like Fuller, nicholas ray, and billy wilder (wilder made a film in pretty much every genre) would make a genre film like a western.. When they did the results were very interesting as they used the same sorts of techniques in these films as they used in their other movies..
The sexual and psychological tensions of such movies like this one and johnny guitar would set them apart from your typical john wayne style western.. and subsequently they are often embraced by a more varied audience..
40 guns is shot in painfully beautiful black and white cinema scope with a stylized technique which often takes very interesting angles on the action taking place in the scene.. The acting and dialogue is pretty typical for a fuller movie - deliberately over the top sometimes.. and the music which is so deliberately western it seems almost like a parody..
All these qualities make it very enjoyable and at times surprising to watch a movie in a genre i usually don't enjoy.. But fuller could turn any story into gold..
July 7, 2007

great classic

with a woman in charge!

nice twist to the classic western.... very professionally done, without too much typical Hollywood influence oozing out. December 19, 2006

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