The Taming of the Arizona Territory !

Mix a little bit of Johnny Guitar, a dash of My Darling Clementine, lasso in a whole lot of Sam Fuller fireworks, and you've got Forty Guns, one of the wildest and most exciting Westerns of the 1950s. A tough, noirish ride through the hard, unforgiving face of the American west, Forty Guns stars Barbara Stanwyck as Jessica Drummond, a despotic matriarch whose posse of (forty) hired guns overrun weak-willed sheriff Ned Logan (Dean Jagger) to make her de facto leader of Cochise County. But when one time gunslinger turned US Marshall Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) arrives to restore law and order, Jessica falls for the new lawman before sending her thugs to intervene in his marriage to female gunsmith Louvenia Spangler. In a climactic stand-off fuelled by danger and desire, Griff is finally forced to break his vow of non-violence.