I'm surprised that the rating for FGW is only 4.3, as I thought it compared reasonably well with other Westerns of the period.The implausibility of five villains being pardoned and then being trusted to fulfil their undertaking to capture the absconding traitor and gold and return both to the Confederacy has already been remarked on. Getting the date wrong (the officer mentioning "1867" when the Civil War is still being fought) was astonishing. And the villains don't look that villainous, despite their crimes.But the plot canters along well enough, the factional aligning and re- aligning of the five is interesting, and the final shoot-out quite original.But I do wonder how much better the film would have been with Randolph Scott starring, Budd Boetticher directing and a couple of real heavies (Jack Elam, Skip Homeier, say).

Five criminals, some smarter than others, are pardoned by the Confederacy in order to rob a stagecoach of Union cash and capture a Confederate traitor. The five make their way to the rendezvous, where some of them menace a young woman and her elderly uncle, leading to in-fighting and the eventual battle with the US Army.It's surprising to discover that the directorial debut of Roger Corman is not only a western, but is in color as well, with good photography by Floyd Crosby and some decent outdoor locations. On a technical level, this looks better than some of Corman's later, shoe-string black and white productions.On hand is frequent collaborators like actor Jonathan Haze, Crosby, and writer R. Wright Campbell, as well as it's distributor, the soon-to-be renamed American International Pictures.As far as the actual movie goes, it gets a bit talky at times, but it's a solid enough B-picture. Also, it's easy to see why villain Mike Conners went on to bigger and better things.

Five guns west is a western made with a low budget, but with surprising results. It tells the story of five prisoners which are released on the condition that they will go on a mission for the confederates. There was a similar story in 'Only The Valiant'(1951) and later on 'The Dirty Dozen'(1967). I wonder who came out first with this idea, it proved to be a great source for films. There is no glamor here, no handsome hero, the handsome guy (Mike Connors) is really a crook and the leader is John Lund.Dorothy Malone is the girl who lives with her uncle in a deserted town, and you feel she is starving for a man, it is hard to accept her loneliness. When she dances with each of the men, you feel she is breaking so many of her own rules, that for her it is almost as if she was making love to them. The Candy brothers, Bob Campbell and Jonathan Haze are as real as it can be, one a man with no morals and the other so limited that he does not know what morals are. Paul Birch is the good bad guy who unwillingly got into trouble with the law. They are all waiting for the stagecoach and when it comes, there are some good action scenes. Roger Corman is the type of guy who seems to succeed in anything he does, and he certainly knew how to make a western.

This early film by Roger Corman was a promising start to what turned out to be an extraordinary career as a director and producer. It demonstrated his ability to tell an interesting story without much to work with. The story was interesting, it moved right along, and there was a bit of a surprise at the end.