Cinema: Rustlers & Redskins

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Two new run-of-the-range westerns have their standard quota of cattle rustlers, galloping cowpokes and Indians on the warpath.

Gunsmoke (Universal-International) casts Audie Murphy as a sort of Dead End kid on horseback—a hired gunslinger who is fast with the girls and fast on the draw. When he threatens pretty Susan Cabot with a pistol, she says: "You can put your gun away. I'm not dangerous." Says Audie: "You could be. You've got the right equipment for it."

Morally uplifted by his love for Susan, Audie eventually 1) annihilates a group of real-estate operators who are trying to grab the ranch of Susan's father (Paul Kelly), 2) rounds up Kelly's cattle and drives them to market against obstacles, natural and otherwise, 3) clinches with Susan in a Technicolor fadeout. In its resolutely conventional blend of sagebrush and six-shooters, Gunsmoke manages not to violate in any detail the venerable horse-opera formula established by The Great Train Robbery 50 years ago.

Seminole (Universal-International) takes place in early 19th century Florida territory, where a martinet of a U.S. Army major (Richard Carlson) seems determined to wipe out the friendly Seminole Indians. Championing the cause of the redskins is a dashing lieutenant (Rock Hudson), a boyhood friend of the Seminole chief (Anthony Quinn) with whom he is competing for the same girl (Barbara Hale). After a lot of war-whooping, Indian raids and military attacks—during which the chief gets killed, the major gets his comeuppance and the lieutenant gets the girl—a peaceful settlement of the Seminole problem appears imminent. Set in the Everglades country, Seminole has several rousing action scenes, but most of the time it is bogged down in swampy melodrama.