General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Last Train from Gun Hill

Last Train from Gun Hill is a 1959 American Western directed by John Sturges and produced by Hal B. Wallis, starring Kirk Douglas as U.S. Marshal Matt Morgan and Anthony Quinn as cattle baron Craig Belden, the father of the man who raped and murdered Morgan's wife. The story follows Morgan as he holds the killer, Rick Belden, Craig Belden's son, prisoner in a hotel room until the deadline, vowing to take him away on the nine o'clock train, the last one out of Gun Hill.¹^•²^•¹¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	July 1959; Minneapolis opening 9 July, Los Angeles 15 July, New York 29 July¹
Director / producer	John Sturges; produced by Hal B. Wallis (with Paul Nathan)¹
Writers	Screenplay by James Poe, based on Les Crutchfield's television story "Showdown"¹^•¹¹
Format	Technicolor in VistaVision with Westrex sound; AFI catalog duration 94 mins (8,477 feet), other sources list 98 minutes¹^•³
Principal cast	Kirk Douglas (Matt Morgan), Anthony Quinn (Craig Belden), Carolyn Jones (Linda), Earl Holliman (Rick Belden), Brian G. Hutton (Lee Smithers), Ziva Rodann (Catherine Morgan)¹
Production	31 March to 21 May 1958, with additional scenes 28–29 May 1958; locations near Tucson, Arizona, the Paramount backlot, and Monogram Ranch, Newhall, California¹
Critical standing	91% Tomatometer from 11 critics and 81% Popcornmeter from over 1,000 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes⁴

Spoilers

Story

Catherine Morgan (Ziva Rodann), described in the AFI synopsis as a full-blooded Indian, is returning from a reservation visit with her parents, traveling with her nine-year-old son Petey, when two men on horseback chase her buggy. She lashes one of them, Rick Belden, across the face with her whip, but Rick and his friend Lee Smithers capture her when the buggy overturns; in the finished film the rape and murder largely take place off screen.¹^•³

Petey escapes on one of the killers' horses and rides into the town of Pawlee to fetch his father, Marshal Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas).¹ The distinctive saddle left behind belongs to Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), Morgan's old friend from his outlaw younger days, now the owner of a big spread outside the neighboring town of Gun Hill and effectively its controller.⁵ Morgan takes the train to Gun Hill to question Belden, meeting on the way Linda (Carolyn Jones), who warns him that Belden runs the town; Linda is in fact Belden's abused mistress.⁵

Under questioning it becomes evident that Belden's son Rick (Earl Holliman) and Lee Smithers are guilty, but Belden refuses to hand his son over, and the friendship between the two men breaks down.¹ Morgan declares he will take his prisoners back on the nine o'clock train, the last from Gun Hill, and holds the town's hotel while Belden's men surround him. Linda helps by passing him a loaded shotgun when he is outnumbered.⁵

Production

The film began as an original story titled "Showdown" by the television writer Les Crutchfield, purchased by Hal Wallis in March 1954 as a possible starring vehicle for Burt Lancaster or Charlton Heston.¹ After the commercial and critical success of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Wallis re-teamed with Douglas, who had by then formed his own company Bryna Productions, for a follow-up Western, bringing back director John Sturges, cinematographer Charles Lang, composer Dimitri Tiomkin, art directors Hal Pereira and Walter Tyler, and editor Warren Low.³ Douglas took the lead role and Anthony Quinn, in his third film with Douglas, took second billing.³

The film went through several working titles: Last Train from Harper's Junction, Last Train from Laredo, One Angry Day, and Showdown at Gun Hill, with "Showdown" also an early title.¹ One week of location shooting took place near Tucson, Arizona; the town of Gun Hill was built on the Paramount backlot, with additional shooting at Monogram Ranch in Placerita Canyon, Newhall, California.¹ Studio records indicate Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster wrote a title song, sung by Kitty White, that was dropped from the film.¹ IMDb credits Dalton Trumbo with an uncredited rewrite of the script.⁶

Style and reception

Sturges shot the picture in VistaVision, keeping the camera low to the ground to emphasize the widescreen compositions while conveying unease, and bathing Quinn in shadow, often in profile, to show the rancher's inner turmoil. The climax avoids a melodramatic Tiomkin cue in favor of the quiet crackle of a burning building.³ Variety called it "a top western...a film that plays for almost pure action" and singled out Charles Lang's technique of opening on a background in medium shot and pulling back to bring in the central character.³

Critics have repeatedly placed the film in the "time factor" tradition of High Noon (1952) and 3:10 to Yuma, in which the scheduled train, unlike a stagecoach, cannot plausibly be delayed, and its departure is the one element of the situation the protagonist cannot control.⁷^•⁸ The TCM writer Scott McGee notes that the script reverses High Noon: instead of waiting for trouble to arrive by train, Douglas's marshal must put it on a train and leave.⁹ Reviewers have also noted the film's darker elements for a 1959 Western, including the off-screen rape and murder that opens the story and a scene in which Douglas shoves the handcuffed Holliman, bed and all, into a hotel window in the path of would-be snipers.³

The film reunited many of the key players from Gunfight at the O.K. Corral but is closer in tale and tone to 3:10 to Yuma.⁴ Stephen Danay of Under the Radar describes it as something of a spiritual sequel to the 1957 film that did not replicate its predecessor's box office success, but as an A-list production, shot in Technicolor and VistaVision as studios competed with television, it offers a window into how American Westerns were changing in the late 1950s.¹⁰ Stuart Galbraith IV, reviewing the 2004 Paramount DVD for DVD Talk, calls it an excellent Western, in some respects better than Sturges's better-known Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Magnificent Seven (1960), and notes that only Western buffs seem aware of it.⁹ Dennis Schwartz, by contrast, graded it C+, judging it better on suspense than on character development.⁵ A 2021 Blu-ray restoration from Paramount Presents drew fresh reviews; Christopher Lloyd of The Film Yap gave it 4/5, calling it a largely forgotten Western in a splendid restoration.⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026