Forty Guns

Jessica Drummond runs Cochise County, Arizona, as her own domain, backed by a private force of hired gunmen known as the Forty Guns. Into this arrangement rides Griff Bonell, a former gunfighter who now carries a federal marshal's badge and has come to Tombstone with his brothers to serve a warrant on one of her men. Jessica is drawn to the lawman despite his refusal to settle matters with a gun, while her volatile brother Brockie and Griff's own hot-headed siblings keep the truce between the two sides from holding.

Samuel Fuller wrote, produced and directed the film, his third outing as director after Park Row and Pickup on South Street. Barbara Stanwyck leads as Jessica, with Barry Sullivan as Griff, alongside Dean Jagger, John Ericson, Gene Barry and Robert Dix among a credited cast of twenty-seven. The production came from 20th Century Fox and Globe Enterprises, and the film runs eighty minutes.

Released in September 1957, Forty Guns drew a critics' rating of 7.9 out of 10 from twenty-one reviews, noticeably higher than its audience score of 6.6 out of 10 on TMDB from 148 votes. That gap suggests reviewers responded to Fuller's handling of the material more strongly than the wider viewing public did.