QUANTEZ
(director: Harry Keller; screenwriters: R. Wright Campbell/story by Cambell & Ann Edwards; cinematographer: Carl E. Guthrie; editor: Fred MacDowell; cast: Fred MacMurray (Gentry/John Coventry), Dorothy Malone (Chaney), John Gavin (Teach), John Larch (Heller), James Barton (Puritan, Minstrel/Peddler/Painter), Sydney Chaplin (Gato), Michael Ansara (Delgadito); Runtime: 80; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Gordon Kay; Universal-International/Kino-Lorber; 1957)
“A colorfully photographed low-budget B-Western.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A colorfully photographed low-budget B-Western intriguingly directed by long-time TV director Harry Keller (“The Brass Bottle”/”In Enemy Country”). It’s scripted by R. Wright Campbell from a story he wrote with Ann Edwards.
Heller (John Larch) is the upstart brutish leader of a newly formed gang that robs a frontier bank where Heller kills the teller. They are chased by a posse to the Mexican border, who lose the gang on the trail. Before crossing into Mexico, they stop in the border town of Quantez, where they must rest their tired horses. They chow down in the empty saloon, surprised to find it a ghost town.
Chaney (Dorothy Malone) is Heller’s beautiful saloon singer girlfriend, who he treats like a dog and won’t let her leave him. The taciturn Gentry (Fred MacMurray), who keeps secret his past life as the celebrated killer Coventry, is second-in-command. Teach (John Gavin) is a green newcomer to the West from back East, posing as a gunslinger and hoping for a fresh start in life. He’s smitten with the lady and openly objects to the way Heller treats her. The other outlaw is the outcast white man named Gato (Sydney Chaplin, Charlie’s son), who was raised by the Apaches and still owes them his allegiance.
A small Apache war party led by Delgadito (Michael Ansara) surrounds them while unseen, and are the reason all the whites fled. The Apaches want their land back and are raiding white settlements in the frontier.
The gang argue among themselves, while spending the night in Quantez and in the morning they will cross the border into Mexico.
They’re visited by a lone minstrel/peddler/painter on horseback called Puritan (James Barton), who Heller forces to sing and paint a portrait of Chaney.
Through Gentry’s heroic actions the only gang members to survive the night are Chaney and Teach, as Gentry must break his vow to never kill again in a showdown with Heller. Also surviving is the eccentric traveling minstrel drifter, who will sing the title song after the film ends on Gentry’s self-sacrifice that has Teach and Chaney hooking up together to see if they can make a new life for themselves in the frontier after escaping from the Indians.
MacMurray’s performance was brilliantly hard-edged in this rarely seen obscure movie that was real good despite a few too talky lapses in the middle-part saloon scenes.
REVIEWED ON 3/5/2025 GRADE: B
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