Incident at Phantom Hill

You're trash, just like me. Only difference is I'm rich trash.

Incident at Phantom Hill is directed by Earl Bellamy and jointly adapted to screenplay by Frank Nugent and Ken Pettus from a story by Harry Tatelman. It stars Robert Fuller, Jocelyn Lane, Dan Duryea, Tom Simcox, Linden Chiles, Claude Akins and Noah Beery Jr. A Techniscope/Technicolor production, music is by Hans J. Salter (Joseph Gershenson supervising) and cinematography is by William Margulies.

"From a forgotten page of history, this is the story of The Phantom Hill Incident, and the events that followed..."

It's a roll call of fine Western character actors, with the square jawed Fuller leading off on alpha male duties, behind him Akins (Comanche Station), Duryea (Winchester '73) and Noah Beery Jr (Decision At Sundown) lift the standard plot formula to better heights; further enhanced by the appearance of Denver Pyle (Fort Massacre) in a deliciously vile secondary villain role.

Plot is set at the end of the Civil War and finds Captain Martin (Fuller) accepting a covert mission to locate a gold shipment that was snatched from a Union party by a rebel Confederate gang led by Joe Barlow (Duryea). During the attack, Martin's brother was killed and this drives Martin forward on his mission. With Barlow offered a pardon to lead them to the gold, Martin, a small group of men, and a "Madame" (Lane) who has been sanctimoniously ushered out of Hays City, set off to the Staked Plains looking for the hidden gold. But this is area ceded to the Commanche and outlaws stalk the land looking for ill gotten gains. Enough problems there as it is, but with water running low and the group coming apart due to differences and Barlow's scheming, it will be a small miracle if anyone makes it out alive.

A thoroughly good time to be had here for the Western fan who has a bent for traditional Oaters that feature a group dynamic creaking under the strains of a hazardous Wild West. There's some thin strains of psych...