Ten Wanted Men - Region 1 DVD

Scott plays a well-to-do rancher who sends for his lawyer brother (Lester Matthews) to help civilize his corner of the Southwest. That's enough to tick off Scott's chief rival and former protég&eacute, Richard Boone, who gets even more irritated when Scott's nephew charms the local señorita Boone has been wooing in his heavy-handed way. His reaction is to import a passel of gunslinging plug-uglies and start making life miserable for everybody.

Boone would prove a superb adversary to Scott in The Tall T two years later, but here he just flails. Scott's character is possibly the most irritatingly self-righteous he ever played, so he scarcely bothers to play it at all. Bruce Humberstone's lax direction leaves no doubt when a stunt double has stepped in for Scott, and if a gunshot happens to fill the frame with smoke, you can count on the air being clear as a bell in the next camera angle. The only mildly interesting thing to wonder about in Ten Wanted Men (apart from exactly which 10 the title refers to) is how elements of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War came to be grafted onto the otherwise nondescript plot. --Richard T. Jameson