The Bounty Hunter

The last of six collaborations between director André De Toth and star Randolph Scott, The Bounty Hunter is a kind of western whodunit in which the title character, known for his ruthlessness in tracking down fugitives (“You’d turn your grandmother in on her birthday if there was a reward out for her”), is hired by detective agency Pinkerton to find the train robbers who got away with $100,000 and killed three guards in the process. Having tracked the killers to a town called Twin Forks, Jim Kipp (Scott) receives an unenthusiastic welcome from the townsfolk, including Sheriff Brand (Howard Petrie), hotel manager Bill Rachin (Ernest Borgnine), and card dealer George Williams (Robert Keys), whose wife Alice (Marie Windsor) takes her own interest in the visitor. As word gets out that Kipp’s a bounty hunter, fears and suspicions flare up (“Must be a lot of guilty consciences around here”), especially among the fugitive killers, two of whom make it their business to eliminate Kipp before he identifies and nabs them. De Toth deftly weaves in doses of romance (Dolores Dorn plays Kipp’s love interest, Julie Spencer, in a fairly forgettable performance) and occasional comic relief, but the criminal intrigue dominates, especially as the action and violence ramp up (one fleeing suspect is shot in the head).