Overrated

One of my all time favorites.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Dawn at Socorro is directed by George Sherman and written by George Zuckerman. It stars Rory Calhoun, Piper Laurie, David Brian, Kathleen Hughes, Alex Nicol and Edgar Buchanan. Music is by Joseph Gershenson and cinematography by Carl Guthrie.One Night In Socorro.A cracker-jack Western this. Plot essentially has Calhoun as Brett Wade, a tough gunfighter who is suffering badly from ill health. Taking advice from his doctor he decides to retire to healthier pastures, but his past and new enemies refuse to let him go. OK! So it's very much a composite of a number of famous Westerns, but to dismiss this as a cheap knock off would be foolish. The script is very literate and the screenplay never gets tired or preposterous. From an action stand point it scores favourably, right from the opening in Lordsburgh where we get a stockyard shoot-out, pic is never dull.I wont arrest you for being naked.There's good black humour in here as well, and some outstanding scenes such as Brett playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata at his own funeral (you will understand when you see it) and a poker game where the stake is the fetching Piper Laurie! There's a constant running feud between Wade and Jimmy Rapp (Nicol), a well written part of the film as it brings in codes and ethics that play opposite another character.The tech credits are bang on the money. Location photography out of Apple Valley and Victorville is gorgeous, as is Guthrie's colour lensing for the interiors. Props and set design is hugely appealing, including a super locomotive for the train enthusiasts to gorge on. While the front line cast members (Lee Van Cleef & Skip Homeier have small roles) turn in very good work, with Calhoun once again showing his qualities in the genre.My past - every dark miserable day of it!But it's with the characterisations where the film strikes the finest. Laurie's Rannah Hayes has been cast out the family home for apparently being a hussy, she's constantly carrying that baggage with her. She finds a soul mate in Wade, a man dragged down by his life, and the weight of such could be his downfall - and he knows it. Buchanan is wonderfully ebullient as the lawman trying to get Wade out of town ASAP, Nicol is hopped up on booze and a thirst for vengeance, whilst David Brian is entrepreneur Dick Braden, a devious man with no code or honour.Highly recommended to Western fans. 8/10

Rory Calhoun plays the dissipated gambler/gunslinger on some kind of a road to redemption with Piper Laurie, with plenty of other well-known actors, some good dialogue, some obligatory gun-toting, and even a little musical interest thrown into the mix.Calhoun may cough like a consumptive, but according to his doctor it is an old gunshot wound plus his louche lifestyle that is giving him gyp;"alright, what is it?""you know why you have been coughing so much recently? - you never gave that wound time to heal properly and it is inflaming the lung." "Is that a medical opinion, or a fact?""Oh, the way you go at it with whiskey, women, and poker... it's a sucker's game!""I always figured that 'the game' would end with one well-placed bullet...""Well, it still might; there's a lot of shooting days before Christmas..."Before he leaves for healthier climes, Calhoun plays classical piano at his own 'wake' (held in celebration of his departure) in a scene unlike any in other western genre movies I've seen. At a saloon girl's behest to 'play something' he taps out a pretty fair rendition of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the Saloon's beat-up piano, which reduces the room to appreciative silence.Later, in the stagecoach with Piper Laurie, when she comes to the aid of this stranger having a coughing fit, the accompanying music subtly echoes the Moonlight Sonata theme as if to underline his character's more vulnerable side.Comment elsewhere may lead you to suppose that the back-projected scenery from the stagecoach is sepia-tinted stock monochrome footage; this might be so, but the sky is blue, and in the long shots the barren landscape is almost equally sepia-tinted. If it is the case, it makes little difference.Piper Laurie's acting is a little stiff, as befits her character perhaps, but then she is also pretty well trussed up in period corsetry for most of the piece; I'm surprised she could breathe, leave alone act.It is best to pay good attention at the start of this film; many of the protagonists are introduced by the narrator in a very short period of time. If you miss this, the rest of the film makes even less sense than it does already; it smacks of having been cut somewhat from its planned length.Overall, a somewhat underrated movie, this one.

There's a good story buried somewhere in the cluttered screenplay. Trouble is there're enough bad guys drifting in and out or getting splattered that you may need the proverbial scorecard. Too bad we lose one of the premier obnoxious punks of the period much, much too early-- Skip Homeier as Buddy Ferris. In fact, however, it's a stellar line-up of baddies— VanCleef, Nicol, Brian, and Homeier, along with other lesser knowns. So will consumptive Brett Wade make it to the good-air mountains of Colorado to recover before one of these cut-throats does him in. He's an ex-gunfighter, so he's racked up a lot of enemies lurking about. But Wade just wants to retire, maybe with dancehall girl Rannah Hayes (Laurie). Too bad that actress Laurie acts like she swallowed a lemon before showing up for work, so sour and unchanging is her expression throughout. Judging from her bio, she was likely obligated contractually with Universal to do a movie she didn't want to do.Calhoun does a good job as the squinty-eyed ex-gunslinger. The trouble is the screenplay can't seem to untangle which of his enemies is the most threatening and why. So Wade's got a lot of shooting to do. Seems like every western of this period had the great raspy voiced Edgar Buchanan somewhere in the line-up furnishing his singular brand of color. Here he's a sheriff, of all things. On the whole, there's nothing special here, just one more passable entry in Universal's lengthy list of 50's Technicolor westerns.(In passing—as a native of Colorado Springs, which features prominently in the screenplay, I can attest to its early attraction for tubercular patients. The mineral springs nearby were supposed to be of special help, including the clear mountain air of that non-urbanized time.)

Rory Calhoun is a world weary and consumptive gunfighter who just would like to hang up his six shooter, but a whole passel of enemies he's made over the years just won't let him quit. A little bit of Gunfight at the OK Corral and The Gunfighter tossed together.After a shootout in one town he arrives by stage to Socorro where Sheriff Edgar Buchanan wants to get him out of town before any more blood is spilled on his turf. But Calhoun lingers and lingers, impressed by the beauty of Piper Laurie who he's ridden to town with on the stage.It's a good B western, directed by a veteran of that genre, George Sherman. Sherman keeps the action going at a good clip and the cast knows their way around a western set.Dawn at Socorro was probably a B feature that didn't bore too many people who went to see the A picture from Universal it was playing with.