A Gal ‘Gunslinger’? Oh My Stars and Garters…
Junk Food Cinema is our monthly spotlight on trash flicks, hidden gems, and (not) guilty pleasures.
By Natalie Bauer
A harbinger of Le Borg’s The Dalton Girls, Roger Corman’s Gunslinger clouds the commonly rigid gendered rules of westerns.
When Rose Hood’s (Beverly Garland) sheriff spouse listlessly utters that she should not hurry to prepare his morning meal, Garland’s dull quip (“What else is a marshal’s wife good for?”) implicitly confirms the ingrained discontent her role has stifled over time. As a nod and a winking reply to Rose’s articulate query, her husband is later gunned down, bestowing her the chance to demonstrate precisely what more she is valuable for.
Briskly loading a revolving shotgun, Rose appears almost joyful while shooting at her husband’s killers. Seemingly the embodiment of the repressed passivity endured by female roles in western movie antiquity, Rose’s lament obliges her to evolve into the protagonist, to exist as the main strength propelling the film. Garland’s somatic expertise echoes this, busily capturing the macho postures, attitudes, and severity of former western characters.
Although the reversal isn’t complete before Cane Miro (John Ireland) arrives in town. Putting on a handsome devil act, Miro becomes the charming bait for Rose’s main character icon that western movie framework customarily needs male heroes to deny. Rose labors to withstand the hazardous allure Miro presents, but, perhaps expectedly, embraces her calling over Miro, culminating as the main hero in a duel of symbolic gunplay give-and-take.
A B-movie with smarts and substance
That the movie has Rose fight opposite to a correspondingly motivated, clearly smart, feminine antihero adds to a comprehensive motif. The men in the town—the fearful administrator, the dummy deputy, the incompetent lackey—are nerveless and frequently eyed sideways by Rose and Erica (Allison Hayes), and the undertone of the movie ponders if they always had been thwarting womenfolk who were long ready to show what more they’re capable of.
Regardless of this movie’s notoriety as an accident-prone production (never-ending rainfall, wounded performers), Gunslinger’s novelty thesis—a woman assumes her husband’s authority, oh my stars and garters—as well as the dedicated portrayals of its core triumvirate of actors who pile on plenty of gendered criticism, build this B-movie offering into a substantial part of the western genre films of yesteryear.