Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

JoeytheBrit Randy Scott goes undercover to bring the dastardly Reno brothers to justice, and manages to fall for their feisty sister as he does so. Based on real incidents, Tim Whelan's mid-1950s programmer probably bears little resemblance to the true facts. Scott's his usually chipper self, his character loaded with a self-confidence that never tips over into arrogance or conceit; he has no doubts, no fear and a single-mindedness of purpose that is downright robotic. The bad guys – a band of brothers terrorising the Indiana countryside – are more interesting; they're stereotypical baddies in one sense, but they share for the most part a sense of duty to one another. Their sister is a real Maureen O'Hara type – only she's not played by Maureen O'Hara, which is a shame because Maureen might at least have bought some fire to the role. Edgar Buchanan as a corrupt judge is also good fun, but overall this modest little western fails to impress.

Spikeopath This is the true story of the Reno brothers....Clint, a respected farmer, and Frank, Simeon, John, and Bill...who were the first train robbers in American history. Looting, burning and killing, this infamous clan rode through the middle border states setting the pattern for the great outlaw bands which were to follow: the James boys, the Daltons and the Youngers.The Year 1866, the place is Southern Indiana.Well not quite Indiana exactly as the film was shot on location at Columbia State Historic Park, and apparently some Western purists see this as a blip on the movies Western worth! (hmm) I don't conspire to that at all since what I want from a B Western such as this is a lush Western feel, with identifiable good and bad guys. I feel that director Tim Whelan achieves the latter and his cinematographer Ray Rennahan achieves the former. Rage At Dawn does have a sense of seen it all before about it, but that's not in detriment to it because it's possibly a picture that has been copied more than it has copied from others before it. It's nice to have a real solid Western using a proper and reliable story to work from. While using top professional actors like Forrest Tucker and J. Carrol Naish to be bad fellas obviously helps the piece; as does having the genre legend that is Randolph Scott as your ebullient good guy. Scott fans who haven't seen the picture should be advised, tho, that he isn't actually in the film for the first third. But as always he's worth the wait and it's clever of Whelan to keep us waiting whilst fully forming the Reno legend.With some nicely staged set pieces (the train scenes are well worth our time) and a fabulously dark turn of events in the finale that goes against the grain (shadow play supreme at work), this becomes a genre film well worth taking a peek at. 7/10Footnote: DVD/Public Domain prints of the film are low on quality and do not do justice to the location and costuming. The best print I have seen of this film was on Commercial British TV. Caution is advised on where you source the film from.

zardoz-13 The notorious Reno outlaw gang ride into the town of North Vernon in Indiana in 1866 and try to rob the bank, but the good citizens have prepared a reception for them, and they manage to surprise and kill one of the gang. Forrest Tucker of "Sands of Iwo Jima" heads up the Reno gang as Frank. His brothers include Sim Reno (J. Carrol Naish of "Tiger Shark"), John Reno (Myron Healey of "Combat Squad"), and Bill Reno (Richard Garland of "The Lawless Breed"). Bill dies during the abortive bank robbery, shot dead on the plank walk outside the bank after the gang had climbed out of a high-walled wagon that they had hidden in during the ride into town.The authorities pursue the gang on horseback to the county line where they have to rein up because the Renos control the law in Jackson County in which they live. Indeed, the Jackson County authorities receive a percentage of the proceeds from each Reno gang robbery so they tolerate the brothers. Anyway, Frank Reno is furious about Bill's death because he suspected that something just wasn't right when they rode into town. Meanwhile, his sister Laura (Mala Powers of "The Storm Rider") isn't overjoyed about it either. She serves as their cook and allows them to live in the house that she inherited from her parents. Laura's relationship with her outlaw brothers ripples with tension. The Renos believe that a spy must have warned the citizens of North Vernon. Initially, Sim accuses their psalm-singing brother Clint (Denver Pyle of "The Dukes of Hazzard") of informing on them, but they discover that the real rat is Murphy (Arthur Space of "Target Earth"), a bartender in town who sends messages to the Chicago-based Peterson Detective Agency. Frank, Sim, and John beat Murphy up, tie his unconscious body to a stall in a horse stable, and torch the place. 'Cremated alive' proclaims the press when word of Murphy's death reaches the Windy City. After word reaches the Peterson Agency, they hire James Barlow (Randolph Scott of "Seven Men from Now") to lead the investigation. The Detective Agency boss tells one of his seasoned hands that he has recalled from Denver, Monk Claxton (Kenneth Tobey of "The Thing from Another World"), that he is to follow all of Barlow's orders "implicitly." According to the Peterson chief, Barlow is worth "an army of men." Western novelist and scriptwriter Frank Gruber of "Northern Pursuit" wrote the story for "Rage at Dawn" and crime novelist Horace McCoy penned the screenplay. This outdoors melodrama is another one of those movies where the hero stages a hold-up to infiltrate a gang, but Barlow plans to have the Reno brothers ask for him to join them than the other way around. Barlow is known to be "irresistible" to the ladies and he helps Laura when he meets her in the store and flashes his cash from the 'supposed' robbery. Meanwhile, Prosecuting Attorney Lattimore (Howard Petrie of "The Tin Star") and the sheriff (Ray Teal of TV's "Bonanza") visit the Reno place and question Frank about the robbery. Repeatedly, Frank assures them that the Renos did not rob the train, but Sim observes that he wished they had waylaid the train and taken the $30-thousand dollars. Frank spits in contempt at the prosecutor, and the sheriff and Lattimore leave as Laurie returns from his grocery shopping. During her shopping in town, she met James Barlow and he helped her carry her goods to her buggy. When two Reno gang henchmen tried to run the unarmed Barlow off, he roughed them up and disarmed them. Barlow is posing as a painter. Not surprisingly, when Lattimore and the sheriff return to town, they have a parley with another member of the local government, the judge (Edgar Buchanan of "Texas"), who is in on the graft and corruption, too. Lattimore is worried because their collusion with the Reno brothers is the worst kept secret in the county. Eventually, the corrupt officials get suspicious about James and Monk and drag them in for questioning. Barlow demands to see the judge and he works out a sweet deal with his honor. The corrupt officials send Barlow along with the Renos in their next hold-up and Barlow shoots the gun out of a clerk's hand during the robbery. The Renos are angry with Barlow because he forced them to flee too early, but Barlow defends his actions. Instead of letting the employees stand up during the robbery, Barlow argues that everybody should have been on the floor. Peterson and Barlow arrange for another robbery for $100-thousand dollars and Barlow informs the judge. Reluctantly, the Renos agree to ride with Barlow and Monk, but Sim threatens to kill Barlow once they've robbed the train.."Rage at Dawn" gets off to a nimble start. Director Tim Whelan introduces us to the nefarious Reno brothers in the opening 20 minutes. After Whelan and McCoy have established the Renos' villainy and the corruption of the Jackson County officials, Scott makes his entrance. Before Scott shows up, the Peterson Detective Agency president builds him up to Monk and his son as a titan. Previously Whelan had directed Randolph Scott in "Badman's Territory" (1946). Moreover, in 1950, Scott and Tucker co-starred in "The Nevadan." "The Nevadan" had a similar plot with Scott going undercover. Ostensibly, "Rage at Dawn" is just another disposable western shoot'em up. Nevertheless, Scott, Tucker, Naish, and a veteran cast are a pleasure to watch and Whelan paces the action agreeably enough in this solid, if uninspired oater. Most of the DVD versions of this public domain western are full-screen, but you can tell from the pictorial compositions that the screen ratio wasn't 1:33.1, but was probably either 1.66 or 1.78, because characters are cut-off in the frame. Ray Rennahan's color photography gives this oater an epic quality. Beware of the PMC Corporation DVD version; the lips are not synchronized properly with the dialogue.

oldsenior First a bit of trivia: In the opening segment as the Reno Boys are riding into the Indiana Territory township for the robbery you can see an American Flag (with 48 stars I imagine) in the background with a California state flag underneath it, with it's bear in the center. The movie was shot in part in California's Columbian Historic Park in 1955..................... Anyway, I thought the movie was excellent and realistic, well told, the writing was excellent and well acted by everyone involved. What a superlative cast: Tucker was excellent, as evil as I ever saw him in any movie, Buchanan, a wonderful actor, was his sly self to perfection, as usual, Mala Powers as beautiful as usual in what I consider an unnecessary part (I wonder if this was a true part of the story), in 1955 you had to have a love interest to sell movie tickets or they supposed it to be. You also had Jimmy Lydon (Henry Aldrich), Arthur Space, Myron Healey, Kenneth Tobey, Denver Pyle, all familiar faces even today, doing what they did best; act, under the fine direction of Tim Whelan, creating what I would think 1866 was like. Also with great music by Paul Sawtell and photographed beautifully by Ray Rennahan. A Fine film that held my interest.