This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

One of the best westerns. Good script by Fuller adapting the Wyatt Earp tale with a female character added. That Barbara Stanwyck did the scene where she is dragged by the horse herself is amazing at age 49, when a stunt double opted out! Stanwyck is memorable throughout. Spectacular low angle cinematography by Joseph Biroc. The pre-titles opening sequence is unforgettable. Fuller's decision to shoot the film in b/w cinemascope is intriguing but laudable.

This movie is a bizarre western that works, filmed like a Gothic horror film, it sets a pace for action that is brisk and unapologetic. The cavalier personalities of the main characters seem like an odd fit with the rest of the brooding characters. Dean Jagger gives a fine performance as the love struck dupe who thinks that a way to Stanwyck's heart is by being a groveling yes man and cuckold. A friend told me that the intent was to make Stanwyck's brother, her illegitimate son, and I think the strangeness of their relationship would have been less creepy had it been written that way. The way it stands there is a bit of over the top emotional attachment that is on the fringe of a husband and wife relationship.That being said, the scene where Stanwyck's is at the burnt remnants of her childhood home is sheer artistry, and visually arresting. To sum it up, the sheer weirdness and bizarre dialogue, along with the writing of the story, added with some truly unexpected twists make this a film worth viewing.

Long before she became the matriarch of The Big Valley, Barbara Stanwyck had two other roles as a prairie queen, the first was in The Violent Men and the second in this Samuel Fuller classic Forty Guns. The title refers to the number of riders, all of whom are handy with a six gun she has on the payroll to enforce her will.Coming to challenge that will is Barry Sullivan who is playing a Wyatt Earp like federal marshal complete with two brothers Gene Barry and Robert Dix. Stanwyck also has a brother, a really vicious punk played by John Ericson.Sullivan's in town to arrest one of Stanwyck's forty who decided to go out on his own and rob a mail coach. Any crime involving the US mail is stupid because it always brings in the Feds, then and now. That leads to a series of escalations and a few deaths among the cast members.Look for Dean Jagger's performance as a really sad sack and corrupt town marshal who is busy conniving against Sullivan and his brothers at every opportunity. But poor Jagger is also thinking with his male member as he's crushing out on Stanwyck as well. Note how Stanwyck responds to Sullivan who is her enemy on that score as opposed to Jagger who's ready to do all for her if she'll give him the time of day.Forty Guns is a nicely paced very much adult western with some nice double entendre lines neatly placed in the script. Barbara Stanwyck loved making westerns and this is a real good one.

I came across this gem by chance after half a lifetime of devotion to the spaghetti westerns of Leone and an unshakeable belief that Once Upon a Time in the West is the greatest Western of all. Suddenly the genre makes a lot more sense. From the fantastic opening shots as Stanwyk and her 40 thieves bear down on Sullivan and his brothers, to the numerous murderous shots which come out of nowhere, to the nihilistic pronouncements of all the major characters the overwhelming impression is that all the great modern westerns were paying homage to Forty Guns in a hefty way. Even the musical moments are strangely effective. The funeral song is a haunting hint of the musical "theme" which accompanies Claudia Cardinale's walk through the station in Once Upon a Time. Add to that the smoking sexuality of a mature Stanwyk and some of the best double entendres going and this is 76 minutes of economic, cult Western heaven. Don't miss it , Clint's tension building walks down "Main street" took their first steps here !