Duel At Silver Creek [DVD]

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Alone with McNally, Domergue vamps him into forgetting his job…In a sense, McNally’s gun had abandons him by becoming lame after an injury, leaving him more open to assault. The Duel at Silver Creek is a 1952 American Western film directed by Don Siegel; his first film in the Western genre. The screen play written by Gerald Drayson Adams and Joseph Hoffman familiarly stacks the motivations and incidents and, unfortunately, blunts some picaresque possibilities.

Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. The tropes and structure that he's working with here are certainly very conventional since it looks, acts, and is executed like a pretty typical Western of the classic variety.

Tyrone deputizes Cromwell, and the two take on the murderers together, while trying to resist the charms of Opal (Faith Domergue), the new beauty in town. Lightning sets out to get to the bottom of the murder and has several suspects already before the deceitful Opal Lacy points him towards Luke Cromwell, known as the Silver Kid. There’s enough action, and it moves along quickly enough, that it’s hard to fault the movie for anything.

Audie Murphy is the main star as the Silver Kid, two six-guns and black leather vest, while Faith Domergue plays Opal Lacy, a sexy cold-blooded killer. It was the first time Murphy had appeared in a film where he played a character who was good throughout the movie. Unashamedly pulpy is this Western, no surprise when you see that it's an early film from legend Don Siegel.Though it does suffer from the bevy of clichés befitting for one of its genre in 1952, The Duel at Silver Creek is pretty satisfying for things you know you want to see in a Siegel feature (B-movie efficiency, surprising violence, straight-up cool noir vibes) but also some things you might not expect (a femme fetale, brilliant tracking shots, and terrific costumes). Set in the town of Silver Creek, it seems like there's a lot that goes on beneath the surface all the time. A young cowboy played by real life war hero turned movie star Audie Murphy is on a revenge quest after the claim jumping bastards.