I have seen two of Harry Keller's films; this one and ' The Unguarded Moment ' where he superbly directed Esther Williams in a thriller without a swimming pool in sight. In ' Quantez ' he directs Dorothy Malone, and elicits from her an equally fine performance. He also gets performances to remember from Fred MacMurray, John Larch and from a young John Gavin, and the latter despite his working with Douglas Sirk never did better. So what of the plot, and giving as few spoilers as possible ? It reminded me of the group holed up in an hotel in ' Key Largo '. It is equally claustrophobic and yes, just as in ' Key Largo ' there is a lot of dialogue as well as brutal action. The way Dorothy Malone is made to sing and fails reminded me of Claire Trevor, and just as good, and instead of a hurricane to face in ' Key Largo ' it is Native Americans out to kill at dawn in ' Quantez '. Appropriately here it is a deserted town in the back of nowhere and ostensibly there is no place to run. John Larch gives a good and mean performance as a controlling thug of a cowboy that reminded me of Edward G. Robinson and just as nuanced. I have no idea if the script had a semi-remake of ' Key Largo ' in mind, but if they did not, then it is a minor miracle of coincidence. Other than a few scenes with rugged landscapes the film is set mainly in a deserted saloon and the tortured dialogue is savage and well worth hearing and when the brutality kicks in it kicks in even harder. A seemingly lost adult Western this should be better known as it beats many other Westerns which have been overrated. A uniformly good cast, and all of them give of their best. My only criticism is a few cardboard exterior scenes by night, and reluctantly I have reduced a 10 rating to 8. Not quite a masterpiece of its genre, but it almost is, and is way above the standard of other lesser, but more well known films.
