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Whistle Stopper - Fastest Gun Alive
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List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $150.00
Your Save: $ ( % )
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Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Starring: Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain, Broderick Crawford, Russ Tamblyn, Allyn Joslyn
Directed By: Russell Rouse
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780792840985
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 0792840984
Label: MGM (Warner)
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Warner)
Release Date: 1999-05-04
Running Time: 89
Studio: MGM (Warner)
Theatrical Release Date: 1956-07-12
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Real Ford Gem
Comment: Glenn Ford played everything from a school teacher, a preacher, to an Aircraft carrier commander. But the western is where he made his name as far a public popularity! "The Fastest Gun Alive" rates up there with "Heaven With A Gun" and "The Last Challenge." All three of these Glenn Ford westerns are definitely worth the time, but this is not only my favorite of the three, it's my all time favorite of Glenn's classic work. The story grabs your attention from the very outset and just gets better as it moves to the end, which has a neat twist to it!
If you're a western fan, you won't be disappointed with this one!
Customer Rating:
Summary: "The Fastest Gun Alive": The Greatest B&W Western of All Time
Comment: The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), starring Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain, and Broderick Crawford--directed by Russell Rouse--is the greatest B&W Western film ever made.
Why?
Because, across the critical board, it is THE BEST in every significant category: story/plot, acting, directing, editing, cinematography, score, et cetera & so on. Crafted with great skill and purpose, it focuses and sustains an exceptional level of dramatic intensity. It vaults gunslinging onto a significant psychological and moral stage, presenting difficult conflicts that urgently demand (and receive, superlatively) fitting resolutions in action. And no B&W Western's conclusion can reward its viewer(s) with a more gratifying sense of its rightness and its benevolence. The Fastest Gun Alive is peerless Western entertainment and an inspired work of art.
This film deserves a restored and remastered DVD release. If, at the time you are reading this review, it is still unavailable on DVD, please contact Warner Home Video and demand it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fastest Gun Alive
Comment: I usually don't like westerns, but this one really caught my attention. It doesn't thrive on a lot of difficult sets and action. It's definately a thinker's western. Here you have a fighter who doesn't want to fight, a town with a secret and promise that they'll have a hard time to keep from breaking to save itself. Very suspenseful and very well done.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ford's Best Western
Comment: Glenn Ford was one of our alltime great Western movie actors. In his heyday, he was great at combining fragile humanity with raw strength and brute force.
In The Fastest Gun Alive, Ford plays a reformed gunfighter who is desperately trying to live down his reputation in a small town, living a very quiet, peaceful existence. But events unfold that reveal his identity, and soon Broderick Crawford, a fast-draw outlaw, coems to town to match skills with Ford.
Everyone is excellent in this film, but great movies like this are made with a great script and a great perfomance by the lead, and Ford is at the top of his game.
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Summary: The Gunfighter as Human
Comment: The image of the western gunfighter has been indelibly etched by the likes of John Wayne in the forties and Clint Eastwood in the sixties as a supremely confident and capable shootist. It is rare for Hollywood to buck this trend but in THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE director Robert Rouse peels away the layers that all too often separate celluloid fiction from brute fact. Glen Ford is George Temple, a one time fast draw expert who has spent years trying to live down a wall of self-imposed isolation that he feels would be needed each time another quick draw wannabe wants to put him to the test. He has learned to camouflage his unwanted skill over the years. He has married an understanding woman (Jeanne Crain), who suffers in silence along with him each time he has to struggle to contain the itch to show off a talent that she knows will eventually kill him. The first half of this superb film is a study in how one man chooses to live a life to which he is clearly unsuited. He runs a small store in a small town surrounded by folk who have no idea who or what he is. The focus is on character development, no small feat in the gunfighter genre. In the next town, a bank robbery led by Broderick Crawford yanks Temple out of his comfortable pseudo-existence. Crawford hears of Temple's speedy draw and pauses in his escape from a posse to challenge Temple in a showdown. It is almost beside the point that any desperado would chance getting caught by the law merely to add a notch to his gun. From the first reel to the last, both Temple and the bank robber are on tracks that do not permit any deviation. In an odd sort of way, both men share more than speed with a pistol. Each is driven by the gun: Crawford, to venerate it, and Temple to negate it. The climactic showdown is the cracklingly effective sort of western legend that has been all too often obscured by the fake glories of the movie cowboy. Glen Ford is a movie cowboy here too, but he makes you think that just maybe this is the way that shootouts at high noon must have been like. This gem is rarely seen except on cable. Catch it and see how a small part of the west was won.
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