2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Steineded How sad is this?

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

zardoz-13 Van Johnson plays a charming as well as well-appareled Confederate officer working undercover alongside Milburn Stone out the west in director Rudolph Maté's Civil War western "Siege at Red River," co-starring future Spaghetti western star Craig Hill and an up-and-coming Richard Boone. The dusty, Technicolor action unfolds in 1864 with Captain James S. Simmons, aka Jim Farraday (Van Johnson) stealing a Gatling Gun. Farraday and his partner Sgt. Benjamin 'Benjy' Guderman (Milburn Stone of "Gunsmoke") work their way from one frontier town to another singing a code song and selling snake oil medicine. Eventually, they come across a Union nurse, Nora Curtis (Joanne Dru) and caravan with her. Meantime, Pinkerton sleuth Frank Kelso (Jeff Morrow) suspects that Farraday, who claims to be a conscientious objector from Boston who paid $300 for a substitute to take his place to the war, is too good to be a true. Farraday's treacherous cohort Brett Manning (Richard Boone), a whip wielding dastard, steals the Gatling Gun and sells it to the Indians. The Civil War concludes about the same time that the Indians launch an attack on a cavalry foot with Manning operating the Gatling Gun for them. The scenery is certainly spectacular, and it appears that the filmmakers are poaching on John Ford country. This standard-issue oater won't raise any brows, but it qualifies as a pleasant way to burn time.

Spondonman It's a typical 50's Technicolor Western trotting out all the usual ingredients with the usual vim – no-nonsense people and plot was the motto.Two Rebs steal the being-developed Gatling Gun from the Feds in an ingenious segment, eventually toting it further south but ending up stuck in a small town. This town gets quickly filled to the brim with Federal soldiers still on the hunt for their gun. Van Johnson (Reb) and Joanne Dru (Fed) fall for each other of course although of course they don't realise it until the climax. What interested me was the implication that the gun could be used by civilised whites against each other in a civilised slaughter but that selling it to the savage Reds was beyond the Pale. Both Feds and Rebs are eventually united to prevent the Reds using it during the noisy 5 minute siege. And of course the implication was only the Reds were low enough to actually use the horrible weapon the Feds had had the brains to design – at the time of production America had the same idea about the Russian Reds and the atom bomb.It has a bit of everything Western in: romance and fights, trains and horses, shootings and slapstick comedy. It's fun, I loved it.

Spikeopath I so wanted to like this, but ultimately it eased out to being a very average picture that is saved by its bookended gusto. The plot basically sees Capt. James S. Simmons (aka Jim Farraday), a Southerner hiding out as part of a spurious tonic selling double act, trying to prevent the mighty Gatling Gun being sold into the wrong hands. After the excellent opening, where a train robbery results in the said Gun being pilfered, the picture drifts along with enough charm but no amount of substance. Van Johnson as Farraday, Joanne Dru, Richard Boone and Jeff Morrow do what they can with the amiable but unimaginative script, and it's only really as we get to the last quarter that the film jolts back into action. Is it worth waiting for? Well yes it is, Gatling Gun blazing and heroes fighting against the odds should always perk up a movie, and so it does here, thankfully.Not one to recommend highly, but worth a watch once with a solid 5/10 rating.

bux Johnson as a cavalry captain trying to stop the delivery of Gatling Guns to hostile Indians. Boone, of course stands out as the heavy, in this otherwise below par oater.