Tension between the two main protagonists is established early in this story, as Lorn Warfield (Glenn Ford) returns home after a lengthy absence, only to be told by Owen Forbes (Arthur Kennedy) that his wife and two daughters were attacked and taken hostage by Apaches. Complicating matters, Forbes tells Warfield that his wife had already given him up for dead, and that he was about to marry her in a week's time. Not the sort of news one expects to hear upon returning home.If I were casting this film I think I would have reversed the roles of two of the supporting players. Royal Dano could usually be found playing less than savory characters, so seeing him here as a doctor treating cholera victims was a new one on me. I thought he would have been better suited to portray the part of the pretend crazy guy, Jimmy Noble. He had already taken on a similar role in a first season episode of 'The Rebel' TV series when he played a coward holed up in an abandoned fort, surviving only because Indians pay no mind to the mentally infirm. The title of that show was 'Yellow Hair' if you care to look it up. In any event, Dean Jagger acquitted himself well as the nutty Noble.It goes without saying that Warfield and Owens succeed in their mission, though as others on this board have rightly noted, the rescue of Angie Warfield (Barbara Babcock) and her two daughters occurred without the slightest of hitches amid a fully armed camp of hostile Apaches. The 'evil gun' connection doesn't come into play until the very end of the story when shopkeeper Wilford (Parley Baer) accepts Warfield's holstered weapon in exchange for new dresses for the freed women. Right before gunning down the aggrieved Owens about to shoot his defenseless partner and rival, Wilford manages to answer his own rhetorical question - "I'll never know how one man can kill another".

Like Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter Glenn Ford in Day Of The Evil Gun is a gunfighter who deserted his wife and two daughters and has now come home. But on arrival discovers that they've been taken by the Apaches and he sets off to find them.Unlike Peck's wife though, Barbara Babcock has grown inpatient for her man and has given up. She's taken up with her neighbor Arthur Kennedy who declares himself in on the hunt. These two form one uneasy alliance.But they have to stay allied because they do come across a whole lot of low lifes on their journey into Apache country. On the way there they come into a charming, but coldblooded Mexican bandit in Nico Minardos, a cholera epidemic in a town with an avaricious store owner in James Griffith and some army deserters who are an outlaw gang with John Anderson in charge.During all this time Kennedy who has lorded his moral superiority over Ford develops into quite a killing machine himself. Makes for an interesting climax.In his recent biography of his father, Peter Ford who played one of the army deserters said that this was one cursed production. Some kind of malady was going around in Durango, Mexico where the film was shot and everyone in the cast came down. The most serious was Dean Jagger who nearly died. Jagger has only one scene in the film, but he plays an itinerant peddler who pretends he's crazy so that the Apaches will deal with him. He looked somewhat ravaged in his appearance. The malady whatever it was also affected the crew on Guns For San Sebastian shooting at the same time.Peter Ford who played one of the army deserters also said his father was pleased to be working with Arthur Kennedy again, they had been together on one of Ford's best films Trial. Day Of The Evil Gun is a competently made western does drag a bit in spots. Still fans of the horse opera and Glenn Ford should like it.

"I'll be the same man when this is over," claims Owen (Arthur Kennedy), Lorne's side-kick in "Day of the Evil Gun". Uh, not quite. Owen is learning to kill, quite efficiently, and maybe Lorne (Glenn Ford) ought not to turn his back on him. It's a marriage of convenience between the two men. Both are on a quest to rescue Lorne's wife and daughters from a band of Apaches and Owen, due to ex-gunfighter Lorne's long absence from the homestead, figures he has dibs on the wife. Along the way they get into several adventures involving a grungy town without pity, Apaches (a highway robbery chase sequence is a hoot), Mexican riff-raff and a group of self-described blue-coat "renegades" (has a more heroic ring than "deserters")."Day of the Evil Gun" is a laconic western that aims just high enough and succeeds entirely. Technically it does much with little and uses the landscape and backdrops to maximum effect, employing imaginative camera angles to describe the action. One reviewer has described the direction (by Jerry Thorpe) as "laid-back" - that doesn't mean "lazy", however. I would use the word "measured". Good widescreen photography and an evocative, but sparse, musical score make the movie seem more expensive than it likely is. Then, too, the movie is buoyed by the presence of Glenn Ford, late in his career, adding conviction to the story, while not too sluggish in the action scenes; also, the ever-welcome, somewhat bedevilled Arthur Kennedy; and Dean Jagger in a delightful cameo as a crazy trinket salesman (crazy like a fox).I doubt that B-western writer Charles Marquis William pays much attention to historical reality. "Day of the Evil Gun" isn't Peckinpah or Leone, and It isn't bristling with "meaning", but all things being equal, it deserves to be seen and enjoyed. And referencing its title the movie is book-ended by two scenes that are practically the same, but different in a suitably ironic way. One question. To what extent does the 31 buck shopkeep debt trigger the outcome?

I used to enjoy Westerns. Now I wonder. This one has a good: cast, color scenery, and production values. The last few minutes were well done. But as a whole it moved way too slowly.I am writing this review to draw attention to the typical way adventure movies --and this one in particular-- have such ridiculous and improbable action scenes. I was really charged with disgust at the way the two men rescued the wife and two kids from the Indian camp at the end of the movie. Everything fell so improbably into place for them. Using ropes they somehow silently scale an escarpment in daylight out of sight and hearing by the Indian guards. They sneak up and kill a guard. They are in a perfect place to spy on the Indian village, including the convenient placement of the wife and kids tied to outdoor poles. The two men scale down the escarpment in plain sight of Indians below, who don't notice them. Conveniently the three captives are in a perfect position to be rescued -- at the edge of the Indian camp (so the two men can sneak up behind them to untie them) and right next to the horse corral (so Glen Ford can stampede the horses so the Indians can't pursue) and near the ammunition wagon and an oil lantern (so Glen can blow it up) and an empty horse-driven wagon (so Arthur Kennedy can drive the family away). Oh, and the Indians were conveniently burying their dead at the time, so Glen and Arthur would have less interference! Even with all this, the Indians should have recouped and caught up to the wagon in the badlands far from a white settlement. The only thing missing from this derring-do is for Glen to have flicked a cigarette behind him to start a sagebrush fire to thwart the pursuing Indians!