The Badlanders

Two men leave the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma in 1898 and head for a small mining town. Peter Van Hoek, known as the Dutchman, intends to take gold and settle scores with the people who put him behind bars unfairly. John McBain wants only to live honestly from now on, but the Dutchman draws him into a scheme to steal gold, and the plan brings them up against a determined opponent.

The Badlanders was directed by Delmer Daves and written by Richard Collins, from a screenplay adapted from W. R. Burnett's novel The Asphalt Jungle, transplanted from the city to the Old West. It stands between 3:10 to Yuma and Cowboy in a run of westerns Daves made in the late 1950s. Alan Ladd plays Van Hoek and Ernest Borgnine plays McBain, with Katy Jurado, Claire Kelly, Kent Smith and Nehemiah Persoff among a credited cast of twenty. Aaron Rosenberg produced for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Arcola Pictures on a budget of about one million dollars.

The film runs eighty-five minutes and mixes crime, drama, romance and western elements. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.4 from roughly 1,800 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.2 from a much smaller group of 46 votes. The two audience scores are close, and the larger sample on IMDb suggests a modest but settled reception rather than strong enthusiasm.