Gun Fever

“My father used to say that Indians were human beings,” remarks one character in Gun Fever, a bleak, frosty, low-budget western noir directed by actor Mark Stevens, his third noir directorial outing after Cry Vengeance (1954) and Time Table (1956). The Sioux “Indians” in this film, however, aren’t human characters as much as an army of weapons “stirred up” by psychotic villain Trench (Aaron Saxon) in his successful effort to foment a massacre of the family of Luke Rand (Stevens), who then makes it his mission to track down and take his revenge against Trench and his equally poisonous sidekick, Amigo (Larry Storch). The revenge story is nothing new in noir, especially in the noir-western crossover, but in this case, Luke is joined by his best pal Sam Weller (John Lupton), who has a secret history with one of the killers. Gun Fever is a small film, and its small budget is ever noticeable, but it’s notable for its hopeless tone and brutal atmosphere; indeed, not until the final scenes does the violent wind stop howling and blowing dust in countless faces. The film also strives for an artistry visible to a lesser degree in Stevens’ earlier noirs, the use of fadeouts and fade-ins for almost every transition adding a deliberate somberness to the narrative, the psychological pain and conflict of Luke and Sam even more evident when compared with the one-dimensional villain caricatures of Trench and Amigo. The unknown Maureen Hingert plays a young Sioux widow, a mostly meaningless role that adds unnecessary romance to the proceedings.