Red Sundown ** (1956, Rory Calhoun, Martha Hyer, Dean Jagger, Robert Middleton) – Classic Movie Review 13,952

Jack Arnold’s 1956 American Technicolor Western film Red Sundown stars Rory Calhoun, Martha Hyer, Dean Jagger.

Director Jack Arnold’s mildly enjoyable 1956 Universal-International Pictures American Technicolor Western film Red Sundown is based on the 1956 novel Back Trail by Lewis B Patten, and stars Rory Calhoun, Martha Hyer, Dean Jagger, and Robert Middleton.

Rory Calhoun plays ex-outlaw gunfighter Alec Longmire, who turns deputy to honest sheriff Jade Murphy (Dean Jagger), at the prompting of the sheriff’s daughter Caroline (Martha Hyer), to clean up a town menaced by gun-toting bad guy Rufus Henshaw (Robert Middleton). The boring part is that of course Longmire falls in love with Caroline, who despises gunslingers.

The ordinary, predictable and routine Western story is lifted just a little bit above the B-movie double feature norm by the film’s fast pace, sci-fi film specialist Jack Arnold’s capable direction, William E Snyder’s colour cinematography, and the tough performers’ sparky playing.

Rory Calhoun’s real-life wife Lita Baron plays Maria. Baron was born Isabel Castro on August 11, 1923 in Almería, Spain, ironically the main site of the Spaghetti Westerns.

Cast: Rory Calhoun as Alec Longmire, Martha Hyer as Caroline, Dean Jagger as Jade Murphy, Robert Middleton as Rufus Henshaw, James Millican as Bud Purvis, Grant Williams as Chet Swann, Lita Baron as Maria, Trevor Bardette as Sam Baldwin, Leo Gordon as Rod Zellman, David Kasday as Hughie Clore, Stevie Wooton, Steve Darrell, John Carpenter.

Red Sundown is directed by Jack Arnold, runs 81 minutes, is made and released by Universal-International Pictures, is written by Martin Berkeley, based on the 1956 novel Back Trail by Lewis B Patten, is shot by William E Snyder, is produced by Albert Zugsmith, and is scored by Hans J Salter.

It was released in March 1956.

Rory Calhoun was married to his first wife Lita Baron from 1948 to 1970 and they had three daughters with Baron. When Baron sued Calhoun for divorce, she named Betty Grable as one of 79 women he strayed with. Calhoun stated: ‘Heck, she didn’t even include half of them.’  He said in 1959 that the only two good films he made were With a Song in My Heart and How to Marry a Millionaire, and that the rest were ‘terrible’.

Dean Jagger (November 7, 1903 – February 5, 1991) won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Twelve O’Clock High (1949).

Jack Arnold is one of the leading film-makers of 1950s sci-fi films, including It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Tarantula (1955), and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

Albert Zugsmith produced three late-1950s Universal masterworks: The Incredible Shrinking Man, Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind.

Lewis B Patten wrote at least 110 novels and three collections of short stories between 1952 and 2003, mostly in the Western genre. Only two Hollywood movies are based on his work, the 1956 Red Sundown, and the 1969 Death of a Gunfighter (based on his 1968 novel). Later, Eli Wallach and Lynn Redgrave starred in a 1971 Spaghetti Western, Long Live Your Death, based on his 1964 novel The Killer From Yuma.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,952

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