zardoz-13 "Prisoners of the Casbah" director Richard L. Bare's "Shoot Out at Medicine Bend" qualifies as an entertaining, lightweight, black & white western with Randolph Scott and James Garner. This fish-out-of-water oater looks like it might have been inspired by the Gary Cooper's Quaker Civil War movie "Friendly Persuasion." Our rough-riding heroes impersonate Quakers after the dastardly villains rob them of everything. This western has the flavor of a vintage Warner Brothers' with Errol Flynn.This western gets off to an exciting start with Captain Buck Devlin (Randolph Scott), Sergeant John Maitland (James Garner), and Pvt. Wilbur 'Will' Clegg (Gordon Jones), freshly mustered out of the cavalry, showing up at Buck's brother's house as Indians are shooting the place up. It seems that Buck's brother Dan Devlin (Ed Hinton) has been sold defective cartridges for his repeating rifle. The Indians kill Dan because he cannot get his long gun to fire. Buck and company run the Indians off. Dan's neighbors explain how they came to get the faulty ammunition. Buck and his friends decide to ride to Medicine Bend to clear up the skulduggery. Before our heroes reach town, they bathe in a pond, and several stealthy owl hoots steal not only their horses but also their guns, uniforms, and the money that they had taken up from the community. Left with little to wear, the destitute threesome wander into a congregation of Quakers camped out on the prairie. The Brethren explain that they, too, have been robbed by three ruffians in cavalry uniforms. They furnish our heroes with Quaker garments and horses, and Buck and company head off to Medicine Bend. No sooner do they ride into Medicine Bend than they discover the chief culprit is shady entrepreneur Ep Clark (James Craig of "Drums in the Deep South"). Clark stole Buck's horse, and he owns a crooked mercantile store where he sells shoddy goods. He has the town sheriff, the mayor, and most of the townspeople under his thumb, and he acts like a gangster when anybody threatens his business. Our heroes masquerade as Quakers after they enter Medicine Bend. Buck watches as Clark's henchmen, Rafe Sanders (Myron Healey of "African Manhunt") and Clyde Walters (John Alderson of "Cleopatra"), vandalize King's General Store. They smash eggs, sabotage a canister, and smear black grease on white muslin. Intervening on behalf of the storekeeper, Buck makes his interference appear like a blundering buffoon who gets in the way of Rafe and Clyde, while he picks Rafe's pocket and steals the amount sufficient to replace the damaged goods. Meantime, Buck persuades Maitland and Clegg to go undercover and work at Clark's Pioneer Emporium. Buck approaches Mr. Elam King (Harry Harvey) about helping him contend with Clark and his hooligans. Buck, Maitland, and Clegg undermine Clark's business, and Buck becomes romantically involved with King's pretty daughter Priscilla King (Angie Dickinson of "Rio Bravo") after she catches him trying to clean up his wounds. Rafe tried to set a trap to catch Maitland and Clegg, but Buck warned them off. He falls into the trap, but he manages to escape before Clark and company can catch him red-handed in the act. Instead, Clyde winds up plunging into the deep well hidden beneath the floor of Clark's office. Later, the pioneers that were robbed are privately reimbursed.Clark discovers the masquerade after saloon songbird Nell Garrison (Dani Janssen of "Written on the Wind") exposes Clegg as an impostor. Sheriff Bob Massey (Trevor Bardette) arrests Maitland and Clegg, but Buck gets away. Clark has Massey stage a kangaroo trial that sentences the sergeant and the private to swing on the gallows. When Nell convinces Massey to release them, Rafe surprises the lawman and kills him. Meanwhile, Clark and his henchmen ambush the wagon train bound for King's General Store. Although Clark waylays the wagon train, Buck manages to save his companions from swinging. Inevitably, Clark and Buck shoot it out in Clark's general store and then swap blows in a rugged fistfight. Clark has Buck subdued and is poised to shoot him down in cold blood when he gets a taste of his own medicine. The cartridges in the rifle don't work, and Buck kills him with a scythe. This tongue-in-cheek western features a solid cast headed by the ever dependable Randolph Scott. James Garner plays second banana and former Green Hornet star Gordon Jones provides the comic relief. Craig makes a stern villain in city slicker's regalia. Harry Lauter and Myron Healey are well cast as Clark's accomplices. Warner Brothers' stock players proliferate in this amusing dust raiser.

gerry one "Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend" is a 1957 Randolph Scott Western that is plain terrible. There is no real shoot out in this movie, just a movie with a disjointed script and a bunch of actors playing their parts like moving statues. Scott had made a bunch of Westerns at Warner Bros. in the early 1950s, usually with Andre DeToth or Edwin Marin as the director and usually in Technicolor. "Shoot-Out" has centenarian director Richard Bare (100 years one week ago, August 12, 2013, a belated Happy Birthday) and Bare directs this movie like it was a long episode of a TV series. Filmed in black and white, not expensive Technicolor.A major plot element of this movie involves Scott and his Army buddies pretending to be Quakers to work undercover to find out who sold Scott's brother bad rifle ammunition. I wonder if the writer saw the movie "Friendly Persuasion" in 1956. Another plot element is that the town of Medicine Bend is isolated from everywhere, so the crook who runs the town can rob wagon trains passing through, travelers like Scott and anyone else with total impunity. There are no marshals, no lawmen in other towns and no newspapers printing stories about these robberies.Beautiful Angie Dickinson plays the daughter of a general store owner. She goes through the motions but she doesn't have that angry look you see sometimes on Randolph Scott's face, as if he is wondering what he is doing in this cheap movie directed by an incompetent. I am pretty sure Scott fired his agent after Scott starred in this movie. James Craig plays the villain in this movie, a businessman who owns almost every business in Medicine Bend. Craig's movie career had tanked by the time he made "Shoot-Out," a long way from Craig's starring role in 1942's "The Devil And Daniel Webster." The abrupt way Craig pops in and out of the movie makes me think that all of his scenes were shot bunched together, so Warner Bros. could pay him for the least amount of weeks' wages possible. That cheapness would explain this movie being shot in black and white, less chance of lab problems requiring reshoots after Craig finished all his scenes. In the 1950s, studio boss Jack Warner had reached the zenith of his cheapness. Every dollar not spent by Warner on this movie shows up on the screen.Something else I really did not like about this Western is that while through most of the movie, the criminals restricted themselves to robbery, at the end, they are busy planning murders. One possible reason for the change could be the way Scott's character killed one of the gang. Scott never made another movie for Warner Bros. after this picture and I can understand why. As I have written before, "Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend" is a very bad movie.

bkoganbing In Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend Randolph Scott is cast as a recently mustered out army captain who arrives just in time to atop an Indian raid, but too late to save his brother. As he sees it the Indians were just doing their thing, but he wants to find out who sold his brother and the other settlers of the community they're building the defective ammunition that left them helpless. The trail leads Scott and his two sidekicks James Garner and Gordon Jones to the town of Medicine Bend.If ever a town needed a better business bureau it was Medicine Bend. The place is run by James Craig, Myron Healey, and assorted thugs they've hired. They have Mayor Don Beddoe and Sheriff Trevor Bardette intimidated. Usually villains like Craig are usually running a crooked saloon and he does that as well. But Craig has all kinds of interests and he undersells the other merchants with shoddy quality merchandise like the defective ammunition he sold Scott's brother. Honest people like Harry Harvey and daughter Angie Dickinson are being driven out of business through his cut rate 'bargains' and intimidation.The title lives up to its name, there is a dandy shootout. I liked the film for the fact it has an unusual villain in the form of a merchant. Unusual for westerns that is. Craig's practices are rather up to date when you think about it.For some reason this film is not out. That's a pity because it's not the greatest of Randolph Scott westerns, but pretty good.

wombatdc 'Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend was entertaining, but not a great Scott western. I enjoyed the 'Quaker' touch though; for a western, it was different. Simply, Scott is out for revenge for his brother who was killed, along with his men, using defective ammunition. James Craig had substituted gunpowder with coal dust to make a larger profit on ammunition sold to Scott's brother and friends. He also cheats his customers and competitors in other ways; he is the original 'shoddy retailer of the west.' Along the way to revenge, he mixes with 'Quakers' and learns to respect their ways. In the end, there is a comedic brawl with the James Craig faction in which Scott exacts his revenge. Scott is ably helped by James Garner and Gordon Jones; with Angie Dickinson and Dani Crayne as love interests. This is a definite below average, though very entertaining, western for Scott. I give it a C-.