Coroner Creek Reviews

The first western from Scott and Brown's Producers-Actor's production company (later to produce the brilliant Bud Boetticher films that would make Scott a western icon), the film opens with an Indian attack on a stagecoach and the suicide of Scott's bride-to-be. Scott tracks the money stolen from the stage to the town of Coroner Creek where villain Macready has used the money to make himself a respected citizen. A long brutal fight with henchman Tucker, during which each stomps on the gun hand of the other, leaves Scott unable to shoot for the rest of the film. Just as he is about to take his revenge on Macready, the villain falls on the very knife Scott's fiancee used to kill herself. An important western that marks the transition from the simple-minded horse operas of the 1930s and 1940s to the later adult themes and sensibilities of the genre.