Dawn at Socorro
                                                                                               
Director: George Sherman
Year: 1954
Rating: 6.0
Solid Western shot in glorious Technicolor with two shoot-outs bookending the film and a lot of drama in between. It is all well done and directed by George Sherman. Sherman was a reliable second-feature director for decades and could bring a film in on time and on budget. He started in the mailroom and worked his way up. In this one he has a good B film cast of Rory Calhoun, Piper Laurie (nominated three times for an Oscar), the great Edgar Buchanan and Lee Van Cleef as always back then, a villain. It falls into that Western sub-genre of a gunslinger trying to give up the life and go straight but his past always comes back to haunt him.



Wade (Calhoun) runs a gambling casino in the town of Lordsburg and has a bullet lodged in his lung. He coughs a lot. But when called upon plays the piano in the bar - the Moonlight Sonata. A big hit with the cowboys. His two friends are the McNair brothers who are the sheriff and his deputy. The three of them cleaned up the town of the Ferris family - the old man and his three sons. The family wants payback and when the youngest son is killed going for his gun, they come into town looking for blood. At dawn they have a shootout as the threesome walk down the street towards destiny. If any of this sounds familiar, it should as it is clearly based on the Earp-Clanton fight at the OK Corral. But this is early in the film. Earl Ferris (Van Cleef) escapes and swears vengeance. So does a friend of the Ferris family who was dead drunk when the fight took place. People sure do a lot of drinking in westerns. Wasn't much else to do back then.



Wade is clearly the Doc Holiday character in this story and after the gunfight decides to move to Colorado for his health. On the stage with him is the friend of Ferris's swearing to kill Wade and a cutie pie who was kicked out of her home by her father because she is a Jezabel. Rannah (Piper) is going to Socorro to work in a gambling establishment. Wade tells her not to. It will only crush you over time. A good part of the film is set in the casino in Socorro and is edgy with the friend wanting to kill Wade, the owner wanting to kill Wade, the sheriff (Buchanan) trying to keep everything under control, the girl dressed in bright red and Wade waiting for the 6 a.m. train to Colorado. And he left his guns in Lordsburg. It has a bit of the High Noon (1952) time passing suspense to the film.