Four Guns to the Border ** (1954, Rory Calhoun, Colleen Miller, George Nader, Walter Brennan, Nina Foch, John McIntire, Charles Drake) – Classic Movie Review 13,584

The 1954 Technicolor Western film Four Guns to the Border stars Rory Calhoun, Colleen Miller, George Nader, Walter Brennan, Nina Foch, John McIntire, Charles Drake.

Director Richard Carlson’s 1954 American Technicolor Western film Four Guns to the Border stars Rory Calhoun, Colleen Miller, George Nader, Walter Brennan, Nina Foch, John McIntire, Charles Drake and Jay Silverheels. It is produced and distributed by Universal-International Pictures.

Rory Calhoun stars as hard-up cowboy Cully, who joins three buddies (John McIntire, George Nader, Jay Silverheels) in a bank robbery in Arizona in 1881. But they tangle with ex-gunslinger Simon Bhumer (Walter Brennan) and his daughter Lolly (Colleen Miller), and they get into trouble with the law (Charles Drake as Sheriff Jim Flannery) and the Apaches when they make a break for the border.

A standard Western, with a screenplay by George Van Marter and Franklin Coen, based on a typical Louis L’Amour story, it is rather dour and adult for Saturday morning matinees. But it is busy, feisty and actionful, with a solid, welcome cast of Western stalwarts, plus nice star roles for Colleen Miller and Nina Foch (as Sheriff Jim’s wife Maggie Flannery, Cully’s old girlfriend). Russell Metty’s Technicolor photography makes it look good too.

Also in the cast are Nestor Paiva, Mary Field, Bob Herron [Robert Herron], Robert F Hoy [Robert Hoy], Regis Parton [Reg Parton], and Donald Kerr.

It is made and released by Universal-International Pictures. Release date: December 12, 1954.

Colleen Miller and Charles Drake star together in the 1959 film noir crime thriller Step Down to Terror.

Colleen Miller was born on November 10, 1932 in Yakima, Washington. She started with small roles in The Las Vegas Story (1952) and Man Crazy (1953), which led to a contract at Universal, where she became a second-rank star in Westerns and film noir. notably Playgirl (1954), Four Guns to the Border (1954) and Man in the Shadow (1957). She starred with Tony Curtis in The Purple Mask and The Rawhide Years. But her top billed role in Step Down to Terror was more or less the end of it for her. She mostly retired in 1958 (though she did the 1963 Audie Murphy Western Gunfight at Comanche Creek) for a life with her camera manufacturer Ted Briskin and two children. Her second husband was Walter Ralphs, heir to the Ralphs supermarket chain.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,585

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