Kent Rasmussen This film has a script so terrible that I reluctantly sat through the entire thing (which is mercifully brief) merely to see how it would play out.SPOILERS ABOUND!The film opens with a shot of a manzanita pine overlooking the ocean that immediately establishes the Monterey, California setting and calls to mind the 1961 Marlon Brando film ONE-EYED JACKS, a film with a very similar storyline that was also set near Monterey. We then see Jay Turner (Sterling Hayden) and Max Reno (Ted de Corsia) riding horses along the surf and learn they are fleeing from a robbery. They go into a cave that Reno calls a perfect hideout. Presumably the entrance to the cave is hidden when the tide is up. However, anyone looking for the men shouldn't have too much trouble finding their horses outside. Morever, Turner builds a fire inside the cave. Don't they worry about the smoke giving them away? (For my part, I'd worry about being drowned inside the cave during high tide.)The men talk and we learn that they've only recently met. They are very different types: Turner is satisfied with the $5,000 he's getting from the heist and wants to give up crime, but Reno wants to continue their partnership and is miffed by Turner's retirement. When Turner goes out to the surf to get a pot of water (What's the water for? Is he intending to use seawater for coffee?) Reno follows him and shoots him in the back. He then takes both horses and flees. This scene stunned me. Why didn't Reno shoot Turner inside the cave, where he could have retrieved the $5,000 and left Turner's body better hidden? Since he seemed not to have retried the money, what was the point of shooting Turner?The next ONE-EYED JACKS element in the film is the appearance of a beautiful young Mexican woman, Maria Salvador (Pamela Duncan), who likes hanging out at the beach alone. Maria drags Turner out of the surf and somehow gets him to her home, where she nurses him back to health. Predictably, Maria and Turner fall in love. Turner is mellowing but is also obsessed with tracking Reno down and returning him to Monterey, where he can be hanged for murder (i.e., murdering Turner). Maria disapproves, but Turner leaves, vowing to return.Meanwhile, Max Reno manages to set himself up nicely, under his own name, in a town called Delrey. It wasn't clear where Delrey is, but it seems to be in or near Texas. A long way from Monterey, California, but it makes some sense, as Reno doesn't appear to be worried about being caught by the law.We first see Reno when he is playing cards in a saloon and winning big. He's obviously cheating, and even the sheriff suggests as much, but he nevertheless wins a huge amount from the saloon's owner. (Would a real saloon owner ever play a complete stranger in a high-stakes poker game?) In a back-room scene, the saloon owner signs over half-interest in his place to Reno, who happens to have a ready-to-sign contract in his jacket pocket. Reno then shoots the man dead and gets away with claiming that the man drew on him. Playing a primitive version of DEADWOOD's Al Swearengen, Reno transforms the formerly tame Delrey saloon into a happening place with fast women, a piano player, and dishonest card dealers.If Delrey really is in Texas, it's a mystery how Turner finds the place, but he does. He makes a dramatic entrance in Reno's saloon and confidently pretends to be "John York" from El Paso when Reno confronts him. It's been a year since Reno has seen Turner, and he never knew Turner well to begin with, so he's not completely sure that York is Turner. He tries a few lame schemes to discover York's true identity. If Reno were Swearengen, he'd simply have York killed to be on the safe side. Eventually, he tries to do just that, but his schemes backfire. Turner ends up as deputy sheriff. Then, as acting sheriff, Turner saves Reno from a lynch mob and takes him back to Monterey. After Turner and Reno leave town, there is a curious sequence in which it becomes unclear what Turner's intentions are. Is he really taking Reno back to Monterey? Does he plan to kill Reno himself? Is he reverting to crime, with Reno as his partner? The answer is (a), and Turner delivers Reno to Monterey sheriff. He then rides back to the beach where he first encountered Maria and finds her pottering around the surf. They fall into each other's arms, but Maria is upset to learn what Turner has done to Reno. Despite the fact that Reno shot Turner in the back and later made several more attempts to have him killed, Maria thinks it wrong to have Reno tried for a murder that didn't take place. Seems like nitpicking, if you ask me. Turner asks Maria if she will love him, no matter what. She says yes, and we next see Turner being put in the same jail cell with Reno.Talk about a movie that doesn't deliver ... there is NO gun battle at Monterey! However, one of the film's few strengths is its ambiguous ending. I expected to see a scene in which Turner is let off the hook for being reformed, but that doesn't happen either. Instead, Reno welcomes Turner into his cell with open arms, forgives him "for everything that you've done to me." The film ends with Turner punching Reno out, as the credits begin to roll. Considering how heavy-handed everything in the script has subtle note. Will Is Turner be prosecuted? Will Reno be hanged? We can only guess. Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if the naive Maria goes back to the beach to pick up more men.

silverscreen888 This western begins with a robbery masterminded by Max Reno (Ted de Corsia) aided by his new partner, gun expert Jay Turner. Turner asks for his share from the voluble Max, who pays him off then shoots him in the back. He is saved by Maria Salvador. Reno plays cards in Del Rey; breaking the house, then he forces a partnership onto the saloon's owner, planning to import "soiled doves", build a stage, cheapen the place. When the other objects, Reno shoots him and Kirby (Lee Van Cleef), becomes his new aide; the sheriff, a reformed drunk, goes along with Reno for the money. Maria, (Pamela Duncan) nurses Jay, and falls in love with him;. He thinks only of revenge and rides off, searching every town. Finding Reno's new place, he sees Reno's gunhands dragging bundles of the latest issue of a newspaper; the editor objects but Van Cleef hurls him into the dust. Hayden rescues him and introduces himself as John York. Reno knew him so short a time, he cannot be sure if he is Jay Turner when he enters the saloon. Reno says he is saving half this place for his partner, but York still plays dumb and takes a room. Cleo, his smartest girl, beloved by Kirby, is sent to find out about the man; She sees the scars in his back. But he says, "Tell him I'm York". She does. Reno lets Kirby, who fancies himself a gunhand, try to kill him. York plays cards, badly, to show he is not the expert card player Turner was; then Kirby challenges him. York beats Kirby up. When he goes for a gun, he disarms him. Reno disowns him, so Kirby goes for Reno and is pistol whipped. York drags him through the town to the lockup. The crowd has the Sheriff make him deputy. Reno's men abduct York to kill him. York digs his grave under two guns, but the two men drink so he is able to clobber both. Soon he finds Kirby has killed the drunken sheriff. Kirby could go with Cleo but he heads for the saloon, to kill Reno. York enters, and by a fast draw, kills Kirby, then talks the mob out of a hanging. The Editor backs him, reminding them they want Reno gone. York promises he will take him to hang. Reno is furious when he hears the real plan later --Turner is taking him back to Monterey to die--for the murder of his partner! That night, Reno tries to kill him with a rock; Turner sends him into the desert and picks him up later. giving him just enough water to go on. "It's a long way to Monterey", Reno sneers. In Monterey, Turner turns Reno over to the law. Reno tries to say York is Jay Turner; but this is the sheriff who had found his bullet-riddled jacket. Turner goes to Maria. She tells him when he explains his action, that what he has done is wrong, that they cannot build a life together on such a lie. He finally understands, turns himself in to the sheriff and joins Reno in a cell. Reno says "I forgive you for everything." "You're a big man, Reno," Turner says. "And smart too," Reno insists. He notes he would have had the girl turn them in--for the reward! Turner laughs with him, then slugs him on the jaw and settles in, to serve his sentence and return to Maria. Cinematography for this attractive B/W western was done by Harry Neumann; the directors were Sidney Franklin and Carl L. Hittleman. The script was by Jack Leonard and Lawrence Reisner. Robert Wiley Miller did music with "Shenandoah" as the main theme, with art direction by David Milton, sets by Joseph Kish. Sterling Hayden is strong, but Ted de Corsia, radio's most versatile actor, does award-level work as Reno. Young Lee Van Cleef is handsome as Kirby. Mary Beth Hughes makes the most of her role as Cleo; Pamela Duncan is sincere as Maria. Charles Cane as the drunken sheriff, Fred Sherman as the murdered saloon owner, I. Stanford Jolley, Mauritz Hugo, Pat Comiskey, and Byron Foulger all do fine work. Tight, memorable, a satisfying narrative by my lights, the makers can be proud of this film.

Robert J. Maxwell Don't watch this. Honest, you'll be bored.I saw it because the description of the plot on my guide grabbed me by the lapels and shook me awake. Something like, "A thief is shot by his partner who runs off with the loot. Saved by a Mexican girl, he sets out for revenge." "Gun Battle in Monterey"? It sounded like "One-Eyed Jacks." But it's not. "One-Eyed Jacks" may have had its longeurs but they were nothing compared to this one, a standard-typical Western into which no one involved seems to have put the least effort.Yes, Sterling Hayden is betrayed and left for dead by his cowardly partner, Ted DeCorsia, and plots revenge but is saved by the moralistic preaching of his Mexican girlfriend. That's about where the similarity ends.Hayden must have done this for the money. He was an actor of limited range but no one ever asked him to deliver very much except Stanley Kubrick. Hayden brought a touch of real pathos to the role of the delusional General Jack D. Ripper in "Doctor Strangelove." Here he doesn't give an inch. He was a much better writer and sailor than a Western hero. Ted DeCorsia is simply Ted DeCorsia, more of a coward than a sadist. The women are perfunctory. Possibly the best performance is given by Lee Van Cleef, a really shifty looking heavy with a strong baritone. The script also gives him one or two lines suggesting he's human a little as well as feral a lot.The supporting players, aside from Byron Fulger who should know better, are sadly unendowed with talent. Not a believable line from any of them. And the director adds absolutely nothing to the Grade-B shenanigans we see on the screen.This could have been a John Wayne western from Poverty Row in 1935. One of those masterpieces where Wayne rides full tilt after the stagecoach along a dusty road lined with telephone poles, past parked trucks. The budget for this movie must have been nearly non-existent and the shooting schedule, I would guess, ran somewhere around 2 hours and 13 minutes.Pathetic.

Terence Allen This movie wastes the talents of Sterling Hayden (who obviously made this movie to fund his famous off-screen pursuits) and Ted de Corsia, who was a great Western villain. A movie about two bank robbers who escape, but one Reno, played by de Corsia, betrays and shoots Hayden's character. Hayden's character is rescued, recovers, and seeks vengeance. It was cheaply made in the coastal California area, and has beautiful scenery, but the script is horrible, and wastes the talents of everyone involved, including Lee Van Cleef, who is an additionally villain. This is a grade-Z Western. Don't watch unless you want a laugh.