Man from God's Country (1958)

Man from God's Country is directed by Paul Landres and written by George Waggner. It stars George Montgomery, Randy Stuart, Gregg Barton, Kim Charney, Frank Wilcox, Susan Cummings, James Griffith and House Peters Junior. A CinemaScope/De Luxe production, with music by Marlin Skiles and cinematography by Harry Neumann.

Dan Beattie (Montgomery) is a former Civil War soldier who is working as the sheriff of Yucca. After being acquitted of murdering a rabble rouser, he quits on principle and heads towards the town of Sundown where he hopes to hook up with his old war buddy Curt Warren (Peters Jr). Upon arrival, though, Dan finds a town run by a shifty business man Beau Santee (Wilcox) who mistakenly suspects Dan of being in league with the railroad company who want to run a line through the town. This opens up a can of worms and friendships and families become in danger of being ruined.

Little known Oater from the end of the 50s, Man from God's Country is a standard B picture that never quite fulfils the promise of its themes. There's interesting threads within, though nothing that hasn't been dealt with better elsewhere in 50s Westerns. The railroad is the devil who patrols the edges of the frame, this causes no end of suspicion and treachery as "honest" Dan proves to be the catalyst for Sundown's secrets and lies to come tumbling out of the dust in a blaze of guns, fists and tears.

It's handled efficiently by TV director Landres, with Waggner's screenplay mature and not without merit. Cast are mostly run of the mill, though Montgomery (looking and sounding like a poor man's Charlton Heston) proves more than capable at being the macho cornerstone of this particular production, where just like Heston he could throw a believable punch. Filmed out of Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, California, there's some nice exteriors photographed by Neumann, costuming and colour are very pleasing and at 72 minutes in length the film never has time to labour.

It's more about "potential" psychological characterisations than action, which is fine, all be it annoying since the characters just don't get fleshed out at all. What action there is is done in short sharp shock manner, and in truth the ending, which is never in doubt, is all too brief and not doing justice to the good versus bad thread that director and writer were striving hard to build upon. 6/10