Kass remarks that Audie Murphy is “ludicrously attired in black leather, like a Western The Wild One (1953). A young cowboy played by real life war hero turned movie star Audie Murphy is on a revenge quest after the claim jumping bastards. The damaged, vulnerable hero and the anti-hero are facets in the same persona and cannot be separated, even when the harm is physical as in The Duel at Silver Creek.

The Duel at Silver Creek dramatizes the perils of personal isolation and infirmity, conditions likely to prove fatal to the forces of evil. Siegel's first western is a fun film and should be enjoyed as such – it's far from his best and fans may only come to it because of the significance in his career but it is worth seeing if you're in the mood for this type of film. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. All the clichés are here but they are delivered with a slight sense of fun that helps it move smoothly. This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.I know there hasn't been that many new releases during the pandemic, cinematic visits have been scarce, with cinemas closed for long periods of time and studios holding back films to make the most from their investment. don 'the don' siegel directs with intense grit -- a comparative trifle, but the seeds of greatness to come; the rare one of his films that actually has interesting female characters, including a high-femme villain! But, man alive, how many movie problems could be avoided if it occurred to men FOR EVEN A SECOND that women might not be the helpless, delicate flowers as which they portray themselves? The screen play written by Gerald Drayson Adams and Joseph Hoffman familiarly stacks the motivations and incidents and, unfortunately, blunts some picaresque possibilities. Leonard Goldstein, the producer, has propped this routine affair against some average Technicolor scenery, and the commotion remains as pat and unsurprising as the kicked-up dust, which, in all fairness to Don Siegel's direction, is plentiful.

At just 77 minutes long, The Duel at Silver Creek is hardly the lengthiest Western ever made yet Don Siegel is still able to pack into it a lot of action in his first outing in the genre.Additionally, Audie Murphy's cropped, black leather jacket is sweet as hell, and this early Lee Marvin role as a local shit disturber reveals just how early he settled into playing sexy, smirking dirtbags. However, that doesn't make this any less enjoyable of a film because Siegel throws in a lot of shootouts and chases to make it all exciting, while the Technicolor photography is sumptuous and the story has enough twists and cool characters to make it work.