Benedito Dias Rodrigues Since the first time that l'd watched this picture in early 80' l found it a real classic western on a low budge but strong enough to put it in a high ground,Ford and Kennedy are fantastic in great shape if consider their ages,deserve a look in the river's fight,the Dean Jagger's role of an insany man is outrageous fine,the desert's scene when Nico Minardos come out is another unforgetable and quite unique in this genre,the desert landscape became another wall to be overcame,without forget Anderson & Stanton soldier's renegades on the desert's border town,the official release stop a long waiting for this charismatic picture!!Resume:First watch: 1980 / How many: 6 / Source: TV-Cable TV-DVD-R-DVD / Rating: 8

Robert J. Maxwell A watchable flick with decent performances by the leads and supporting cast, using some striking desert photography from Durango as background. Ford is a tired gunfighter who returns home to find his wife and two children kidnapped by Apaches. Kennedy is his rival who claims that she was just about to marry him.The mismatched pair team up to retrieve Ford's family, but it's allmighty hard a-trackin' them through this here desert. Along the way they must pry information out of a handful of truculent witnesses, natural challenges, and assorted miscreants. The first group includes Dean Jagger as a filthy, mentally challenged desert dweller. The second set includes cholera and vultures. The third includes a group of self-styled renegade deserters from the Army.Ford is forceful enough but burned out from the mayhem he's created in the past. Kennedy is by far the more ruthless of the two.In the end they manage to reach the Apache camp and escape with the prisoners, but a cathartic showdown between Ford and Kennedy is unavoidable. Our sensibilities demand that Kennedy die. (I wonder why? Our ostensible hero, Glen Ford, the man we admire so much, wouldn't have demanded it, yet we in the audience wring our hands in expectation of seeing Kennedy shot full of holes.) At the climactic moment, Kennedy turns into not merely a brutal man but a conniving and cowardly murderer, which he has not been before, in order to justify his killing. It's an "evil gun," as the storekeeper comments, but it's a bullet from that gun that satisfies the viewers. Some might call it hypocrisy, since the ending violates the principles that the movie itself has been preaching all along, but I'd just put it in the "commercial interests" basket and let it go, just another movie that rejects violence except when doing so would lead to less pelf.Sorry. Carried away there. Will someone help me down from this soap box? Thank you. Thank you very much.Ford is his usual cool and savvy Westerner, wearing his usual small-brimmed hat, and is outfitted in earth colors suggestive of nature. Kennedy is always in a black hat and dirty shirt. Dean Jagger is absolutely FILTHY. I suppose there's no water in the desert, just plenty Alacron de Durango.The Apaches are treated reasonably for a Western. They are human enough to retrieve their dead and hold funeral ceremonies. They may violate our laws by kidnapping -- kidnapping and adoption and such things were traditionally acceptable -- but they're neither treacherous no inherently evil. Not like that gun.

wmjahn I like Glen FORD and consider this western a minor classic. Pretty unknown and still waiting to be recognized even by movie buffs this little gem has definitely not yet the reputation it deserves."Directed with lazy assurance" as the TIME OUT FILM GUIDE correctly writes, by veteran director Jerry Thorpe, and played with laid back gusto by all involved, this western offers a very grim and dark view on the "old west", more influenced by the Italo-western (which was in full bloom in the later 60ies) than the classic US-flick. Gunfighter FORD, aged, bored, tired and with "have-seen-it-all" eyes, comes back home just to find his wife and 2 small daughter carried away by Apaches. Arthur KENNEDY claims his wife was about to marry him and after an incredibly tough fist-fight they team up (unwillingly) to rescue them.What follows is an odyssey through some very bizarre situations, staged with the aforementioned lazy assurance, situations, which one does not happen to see in many other US-western: everything is dark, depressing, cynical and void of any sympathy. Whereas THE SEARCHERS had some hope underneath, this is more than 10 years later and the characters, scripted by veteran scriptwriter Charles Marquis Warren, are driven by the urge to do what has to be done, but equipped with little hope. FORD plays the "lost character" in an old west with dark cynical humor, one of his best later performances. Kennedy is fine, too, and also very worth mentioning is the character played by Nico Minardos, whom you would more expect to find in any Quentin Tarantino movie than in a B-western from the later 60ies. Great rough music by Jeff Alexander! All in all a very watchable outing, made by experts, each of whom must have had a dozen or more western to his credit at the time, when they teamed up to put DAY OF THE EVIL GUN on celluloid.Watch out for this and don't miss it, it's very well worth a viewing !

roles68 Make movie available on DVD as you can't buy this excellent movie on any format. Anyone who likes westerns should not miss this one. The psychological roles that Ford and Kennedy play make this movie definitely different and spellbinding for the viewer. What's interesting about this movie is the apparent role changes that take place between Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy. They switch from Ford as a reforming gunslinger to Kennedy a mild family man turning the opposite direction. The movie lived up to my expectations of both actors. I missed this movie when it was first released in 1968 and can not find it available in any format. So far, catch it on TV if you can in your area.