Day of the Outlaw (1959) is one of those little-known gems that hard-core movie fans love to discover. At a time when television and movie studios were grinding out one generic Western after another, Day of the Outlaw added twists that made it unique.

Robert Ryan stars as Blaise Starrett, hard, bitter and remote as only Ryan could play him. A cattleman, he's out to settle scores with Hal Crane (Alan Marshal), head of a small town of settlers putting out barbed wire and starting farms. Complicating the rivalry is the fact that Starrett was once the lover of Crane's young wife (Tina Louise). On the surface, it's rather standard fare for a fifties Western but the first twist comes from the locale. The action is set in Wyoming in the middle of winter. No dusty, sun baked streets here, just white snow and patches of ice lending a deathly quiet and slowing all movement to a slog.

The second twist comes just as Starrett and Crane square off for their big showdown. Before the two men can draw their guns, a gang of outlaws invade the town, collecting all the guns and holding everyone hostage. The gang's leader, renegade Union officer Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), is the only one keeping the gang from drinking all the whiskey and taking the town's women as their prizes. Unfortunately, he may be dying from a gunshot wound. Now the antagonistic cattleman and farmer, along with Bruhn, have to form new alliances to keep disaster at bay. However, it is the freezing cold outside that is actually sealing their fate.

Director Andre De Toth was a Hungarian director who fled to the United States during World War II and is probably best known for having directed the most famous 3-D film, House of Wax (1953), despite being blind in one eye. In Anthony Slide's 1996 book De Toth on De Toth, the director recalled the making of Day of the Outlaw:

"[The producers] didn't understand where I was heading - a sphere I had been exploring for some time: is it worse being the jailer, instead of the prisoner? Is it worse being incarcerated by white snow in white silence, or by the blankness of black silence? Which of the human flock would fall apart first under the tightening band of their communal deep freeze?

"I wanted the town to be built and ready to shoot three, four months before the start date. I wanted the weather, the rain and snow to age the buildings, not painters' spray and cotton wool for snow on the roofs. The weather and the natural snow were cheaper than studio material and labor.

"I built a small Western town in my backyard, Oregon. But when they built it, they ignored the compass headings I had given them for the layout of the streets and they built the town in the wrong direction. Shooting it as it was built would've added additional weeks to the shooting, so I ordered the damned joint to be rebuilt. UA and Bob Ryan understood the short days of winter shooting, the saving it entailed using minimal artificial lights and the quality it gained. I didn't want the virgin snow to be defiled by the tracks of the poor electricians dragging cables and lamps on overtime."

De Toth also had to fight the producers to shoot the movie in black-and-white: "It was a story of tension and fear, survival in a prison of snow. Had I shot it in color, the green pine trees covered with snow, the soft glow of candles, the dancing tongues of flames in the fireplaces would have radiated warmth and safety and the joy of peace on earth. A 'Merry Christmas' card from fairy-tale land."

The director's meticulous care created one of the great Westerns of the Fifties, constantly surprising and creating a bone-deep chill that makes Day of the Outlaw memorable long after so many of the other hastily-made Westerns of that time have been forgotten.

Director: Andre de Toth
Producers: Sidney Harmon, Philip Yordan
Screenplay: Philip Yordan, based on the novel by Lee Wells
Cinematography: Russell Harlan
Editor: Robert Lawrence
Music: Alexander Courage
Cast: Robert Ryan (Blaise Starrett), Burl Ives (Jack Bruhn), Tina Louise (Helen Crane), Alan Marshal (Hal Crane), David Nelson (Gene)
BW-93m.

by Brian Cady