Four Fast Guns is an interesting if not completely successful B western, done at a time when these kinds of films and stories were finding more of a home on the small screen. I could have seen this one as an episode on The Virginian for instance which was a 90 minute show.
James Craig has an encounter with a 'town tamer' on the trail and when he gets prodded into a fight he kills the prodder. Craig goes on into the town with the name of Purgatory and proceeds to take the job of town tamer.
Who Purgatory wants to eliminate is Paul Richards, once a fast gun himself, but now limited to running the saloon and all the organized outlawry in the area. Richards is limited also because he's in a wheelchair due to a broken back. And apparently he's also limited as far as wife Martha Vickers is concerned.
Richards sends a series of gunmen against Craig, Four Fast Guns to be precise. Three come up short, but the fourth is Brett Halsey who presents some unique problems no one foresaw on both sides.
The B western had certainly moved way beyond the Saturday matinée kiddie trade. You wouldn't have a Roy Rogers western dealing with something like impotence. Four Fast Guns probably would have been more explicit but for the Code.
Four Fast Guns was done on the cheap so it won't get a higher rating from me. Still it's an interesting work.
