Day of the Outlaw

Starting out just as harsh and bitter as his character in another 1959 noir, Odds Against Tomorrow, Robert Ryan stars in André De Toth’s Day of the Outlaw as ruthless cattleman Blaise Starlett but this time he finds his humanity and mends his ways before the halfway mark. Having founded the small and aptly named town of Bitters, Wyoming, Starlett is angry at homesteader Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) for promoting barbed wire fences around the territory and for marrying Starlett’s old flame Helen (Tina Louise) whom he still loves. Despite Helen’s pleading with him not to kill her husband, Starlett prepares for a showdown with Hal, but this idea is shelved when Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), suffering from a gunshot wound, and his band of crude, savage accomplices arrive to take the town hostage until Jack is treated by the local doctor. Now under the control of ruthless rogues, Starlett seizes the opportunity to protect his town and redeem his character. After successful bullet removal surgery (a grueling scene), Bruhn attempts to control his men, who have gone for many days without women or wine (“We’ll pleasure ourselves at the end of the trail”), by locking up the female residents to protect them from being raped by the lusty, slobbering beasts (“I wanna make the little one happy”); while they never gain the opportunity for sex, the captors do get to dance with the womenfolk, spinning wildly and violently around the floor. Set among snowy mountains and cold winds, the claustrophobic setting adds to the film’s bleakness, perhaps the only spot of hope found in the budding, star-crossed relationship between a young bandit named Gene (David Nelson) and local girl Ernine (Venetia Stevenson).