JLRVancouver "Vengeance Valley" is a great title squandered on a not so great movie (and, oddly, one in which there isn't really much 'vengeance'). Burt Lancaster plays the up-right, honourable foster-son of a crippled cattleman at odds with his brother (and blood-son of the rancher), a conniving ne'er-do-well with a quick gun-hand. Complicating matters, the married brother has fathered a child on a local lass and her two ornery brothers have shown up to hunt down the scoundrel who dishonored their sister. Lots of shots of Lancaster's legendary grin and tousled good-looks, generic cow-poking, and mountain scenery but other than some fisticuffs and the inevitable showdown at the end, there's not a lot of action. Most of the characters are typical Hollywood western-types and the script/acting is on par with a good episode of Bonanza (although the unwed mother story line might be a bit to risqué for the Cartwrights). IMO, Lancaster is one of the all-time great "Hollywood leading-men" but even his undeniable charisma can't raise "Vengeance Valley" above the great raft of mediocre westerns to tumble out of the sagebrush in the '50s.

weezeralfalfa A 1951 MGM color western, lapsed into public domain. Several copies available at YouTube: all with frequent washed out colors and slightly fuzzy image. Nonetheless, they are good enough for the determined viewer. Also available in "The Great American Western" DVD pack.The screenplay focuses on an unwed mother(Sally Forrest as Lily),and the question of who is the father. Lily won't tell and neither will the father, who doesn't want to suffer retribution at the hands of her 2 big brothers Hub(John Ireland) and Dick(Hugh O'Brien), or his wife or father. Although neighbor Hewie, a young ranch hand, has long had a crush on Lily, suspicion falls on Owen(Burt Lancaster): one of two brothers who run a neighboring ranch for their ailing father(Arch). Owen's guilt is assumed by some after he visits Lily, staying at a neighbor's house, and leaves her $500. Later, it's discovered that Owen's brother Lee(Robert Walker) withdrew $500. from their account, making his wife, Jen(Joanne Dru) assume that he is the likely father. She tells Owen she wants to leave, but Owen talks her into staying, although she locks Lee out of the bedroom. Owen has also figured out that Lee is the father but, like Jen, won't tell anyone. Lily's brothers still believe Owen is the father, and stick him up when he again visits Lily. Owen has a fist fight with one, until Lily appears with a rifle to end it, and send her brothers to jail for a week. I should explain that Owen was adopted as an orphan, while Lee is Arch's(father) natural son. Amazingly, the narrator in the introduction gets this backwards! Owen appears to be a little older and definitely taller and bigger. He's the foreman, and certainly more responsible than Lee. One wonders why Jen married Lee rather than Owen. Owen suggests to Lee that if he values his life, he best leave for other parts before Lily's brothers get out of jail. Lee sends mixed messages as to whether he is leaving. He asks for and receives a half ownership share of the father's ranch. Yet, he sells 3000 head of cattle, supposedly to get him started in parts unknown. Arch says that Owen will inherent the other half interest in the ranch when he(Arch)dies. Lee arranges for Lily's brothers to join the cattle herding, arranging with them to ambush Owen when Lee leads him to the place. Well, you can more or less guess what actually happens. Unfortunately, there is no hint whether Owen and Jen are likely to marry, or whether Owen or Hewie will likely marry Lily. Lily seems a pretty independent person, but my guess is she will eventually marry Hewie, as someone who will not try to be too dominating over her.

moonspinner55 Feckless cowboy, married but also semi-secretly the father of an infant born to an unwed neighbor girl, allows his foster-brother to take the rap when the vengeful brother of the tight-lipped lass comes to town packing heat. Oater opens with a laughably clichéd narration by a Jimmy Stewart sound-alike informing us this is a yarn about "cow country and cow punchers, cattle, and men. Worn leather, saddles, blisters and branding irons!" Unfortunately, it turns out to be a rather wan, dim horse-opera, with Robert Walker's rotter one-dimensionally written and portrayed (he whips a horse that won't let him ride, a signal to us that his wife--who only has one Sunday dress--is miserable at home). Burt Lancaster, occasionally unshaven and cat-like in his movements, broods sexily and is the only reason to watch the picture. *1/2 from ****

sol **SPOILERS** Coming back from a 1,000 mile cattle drive Owen Daybright, Burt Lanaster, and his step brother Lee Strobie, Robert Walker, are socked to find out the the local and unmarried saloon waitress Lily Fasken, Sally Forrest,has given birth to a baby boy. The big thing about all this is that Lily's brother Dick, Hugh O'Brian, has showed up at the Strobie house when Lily is now being cared for by Lee's wife Jen, Joanne Dru, to find out who his sister baby's daddy is and make him pay either by arranging a shotgun wedding for him or using the shotgun, if he refuses, to blast him to kingdom come!Because Owen is so concerned for Lily and her infant son that he goes so far as giving her $500.00 to take care of things that Dick interprets that act of kindness as an admittance of guilt in him being the person who knocked her up! Seeing that he's no match for the much bigger stronger as faster, on the draw, Owen Dick calls for help in getting his big brother Hub, John Ireland, to come over and help him out in taking on Owen. What the two violent and airhead Fasken brothers totally overlook is the obvious! It wasn't the honest and gentlemanly Owen who put their sister Lily in the "family way" but Owen's sneaky and lying step-brother Lee!The noble and straight shooting Owen ends up taking a number of beating from the Fasken boys, as well as giving them back as good as he takes, throughout the entire film even though he knows that it was Lee who's their sisters baby's father that he's accused of being. Lee in return for Owen's generosity, in keeping the truth about his relationship with Lily secret, ends up setting up Owen to be gunned down by the Fasken brothers as well as trying to swindle the Strobie Ranch right from under his dad's Arch Strobie, Ray Collins, nose! What a rat fink and low-life piece of horse manure he turned out to be!**SPOILER ALERT*** All this malicious shenanigans on Lee's part backfires on him with his bumbling partners in crime, in trying to murder Owen, the Fasken Brothers screwing up as usual his master-plan in getting themselves killed by Owen and the sheriff's posse who came to his rescue. As for Lee he meets his end, and his maker, at the end of his brother's .42 revolver when he challenged Owen to draw on him thinking that he, in practicing day and night for years, would easily outdraw him. Owen in the end did what was right like he did throughout the entire film by telling, out of hearing range from the movie audience, the dead Lee's wife Jen, who in fact had no use for him when he was alive, the truth about her unfaithful husbands infidelity! Which I suspect she knew about all along!