The Duel at Silver Creek (1952)

I’ve become a keen fan of Audie Murphy’s westerns. The Duel at Silver Creek is a fairly early one (from 1952) and it’s directed by Don Siegel which makes it sound promising.

To begin with it seems like very much a stock-standard B-western. Claim jumpers are not just forcing miners to relinquish their claims, they’re murdering them afterwards so there will be no witnesses. One of their victims is Luke Cromwell’s dad and since Luke is played by Audie Murphy we can be pretty sure that the young man is going to do something about this. In fact he’s already started on the project, killing three of the claim jumpers before they make their escape.

So this is a standard revenge western set-up.

We also know that Luke has a taste for poker, which will be important later.

What has to be said in the movie’s favour right from the start is that it packs an extraordinary amount of action into the first ten minutes or so. And the body count is already climbing (it will climb a good deal higher).

Audie then disappears for a while and the focus shifts to Silver City’s marshal, Lightning Tyrone (Stephen McNally). He’s put together a posse to go after the claim jumpers, leaving his dad in charge of the town as a deputy.

Since he’s leaving his lady love Dusty (Susan Cabot) behind and the sinister sleazy Johnny Sombrero (Eugene Iglesias) is taking an unhealthy interest in the young lady we have to wonder if it’s a wise move on Lightning’s part to leave the town with only an old man to keep order. We know what always happens in westerns when such a situation occurs.

The posse finds the jumpers but Lightning manages to get himself shot straight away and the jumpers escape. Lightning is taken to a nearby Army post to recover from a fairly minor wound. While he’s there the claim jumpers’ latest victim is brought in and he’s still alive. Finally it looks like the marshal has a living witness.

Then things start to get more interesting. An angel of mercy appears on the scene, a pretty young woman with nursing experience to volunteers to help care for the wounded miner.

But she’s no angel of mercy. Opal Lacy is a bad girl. In fact she’s a really bad girl. The arrival of a bad girl in any movie is always guaranteed to spark my interest. Even better, the bad girl is played by Faith Domergue, in my opinion a very fine actress who deserved a much better career.

Lightning arrives back in town and he’s out to find a killer. There are two obvious suspects - Johnny Sombrero and a stranger who just recently rode into town. The stranger is a young punk of a poker player who is also incredibly fast with a gun. He goes by the name of the Silver Kid. And the Silver Kid is none other than Audie Murphy. Luke Cromwell has undergone a bit of a transformation.

To our surprise, and to his even greater surprise, the Kid soon finds himself wearing a deputy’s badge.

And Opal Lacy has turned up in Silver City. Lightning had taken a shine to her at the Army post and now he’s even more interested. Lightning still doesn’t know the identity of the killer he’s after and he has a bigger problem than that. That bullet wound in the shoulder means he can still draw as fast as ever but he can’t squeeze the trigger.

Lightning is an experienced lawman but he jumps to conclusions and he has a mind that can best be described as plodding. The Silver Kid might seem like he’s still wet behind the ears but he’s much smarter than the marshal and he has the kind of suspicious mind that a good lawman needs. Poor Lightning just gets led by the nose and his lack of perceptiveness is likely to get him into a world of trouble.

Don’t expect any complex characterisation in this movie. Every character is a standard western type. Stephen McNally is fine as the marshal. Susan Cabot is very good. Lee Marvin has a small rôle as a rambunctious gambler. A year later Marvin would attract a lot more attention in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat and he’d go on to make appearances in western classics like 7 Men From Now (1956). It’s not a complex rôle for Audie Murphy but he has that characteristic Audie Murphy brand of charisma going for him. Faith Domergue makes a most satisfactory femme fatale type. And she has one absolutely chilling scene. The cast have little to work with but they do what they can.

This movie really does turn out to be very much a routine B-western. On the plus side Don Siegel handles the action scenes competently. The secret to making successful B-movies is to keep things moving along so quickly that the audience doesn’t have time to notice dodgy production values or a threadbare script. In this case the script is very threadbare and very clichéd indeed but Siegel maintains a frantic pace and throws in lots of action.

The Duel at Silver Creek is not by any stretch of the imagination a top-tier western. It’s not even a top-tier B-western. But it looks good and it can be fun waiting to see which western cliché the script will offer up next. It’s a movie version of junk food. No nutritional value but you’ll get the desired sugar rush. And there are times when one really craves junk food, and if you’re having such a craving then The Duel at Silver Creek is recommended.

This is one of three movies in the recent Kino Lorber Audie Murphy western Blu-Ray boxed set. The set also includes the superb No Name on the Bullet (1959) and the very good Ride a Crooked Trail (1958). This is a set very much worth buying. The Duel at Silver Creek gets an excellent transfer.