Truly Dreadful Film

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Stage to Tucson was the ideal western to see on a weekend afternoon in the fifties. It did not have one hero, but two: Rod Cameron, who was getting a bit old and Wayne Morris a young guy who was always smiling. Just before the civil war starts their mission is to find out who is stealing all the stagecoaches. They are also in love with the same woman. The film is in color and had a more expensive production than an average B western. There are plenty of stagecoaches and a particular one that is the precursor of a war tank. Before action movies meant car, boat or motorcycle chases, people used to have fun with horses and stagecoaches, and this is one of the best of that kind.

Entertaining Western set in the early months of the Civil War. Stage coaches connecting Union states in the East with Arizona and California are being hijacked by Southern sympathizers. Grif Holbrook (Rod Cameron) and Barney Broderick (Wayne Morris), employees of the stage line, work together to find the hijackers while they compete for the affection of bookkeeper Kate Crocker (Kay Buckley). Plenty of action -- fist fights, gun fights, chase scenes -- and some unexpected humor too, revolving around the rivalry between the two men. Nothing the least bit original here, but plenty of excitement and some laughs as well.