Note: Let's take a break from Perry Goddamn Mason. No less a cultural arbiter than TV Guide acknowledged William Talman in this cheapo western as “the U.S. Marshal who lends a hand …” and remarked that Talman “efficiently takes care of a trio of heavies,” indicating he brought a steady, workmanlike energy to the role. Talman played the DA in the greatest courtroom drama in the history of broadcast television.
Two
Gun Lady
1956 / 1:11
Tagline: “A two-timing petticoat built to break a man's
heart!”
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This isn’t your standard shoot-’em-up with a square-jawed hero and a schoolmarm waiting in the wings. It’s a Western boiled down to gristle and bone, where men swagger like alpha roosters and then die like flies. The surprise is that it's not about men. It’s about Kate Masters, a woman who walks into this moral wasteland with pistols on her hips and vengeance in her veins. Forget the Annie Oakley tricks - those are just the window dressing. What matters is that Kate is the only one in this dried-up world who understands that she can choose personal vendetta or the law, that justice isn’t just a bullet to the brainpan.
The men are a sorry lot. Jud Ivers, a patriarch with a soul of soot, thinks violence will buy him peace. His son Ben is a walking pathology case - cruel to animals, crueler to women, and dumb enough to think a gun makes him a demi-god. Dan Corwin, the law with a grin, imagines he’s Kate’s savior, but he’s just another deluded pissant in pants. They all drink, brag, and brawl, as if noise could drown out the emptiness in their souls.
What makes this curio worth a look is its bleak honesty. The script may be thin and the sets cheaper than a dime-store cap-gun, but the theme cuts deep: men’s hearts are dark, and their ways are cruel. Into that darkness rides Kate - a woman forged in massacre, carrying her own brand of justice. When the smoke clears, the moral is clear: in a world of endless violence by angry lost men, retribution is more just when pursued legally.
And yes, William Talman shows up, doing the mixed-up guy archetype of James Dean and Monty Clift, but the other surprise is that the film flirts with revisionism. It’s grim, it’s fierce, and it dares to focus on a woman’s wrath in a genre that usually treats women like furniture, in a culture uncomfortable with the anger of women.