Shoot-Out (1971)

Gregory Peck is Clay Lomax and he’s just finished serving a seven-year sentence for robbing a bank in the town of Weed. He was caught because he was shot in the back by his partner as they left the bank.

Now he wants to track down that partner, Sam Foley (James Gregory), but doesn’t know where to find him. Seems Sam has gone honest after making off with all that stolen loot.

So Lomax heads back to Weed and tries to bribe a wheelchair-bound barkeep named Trooper (Jeff Corey) for information about Sam’s whereabouts.

Then comes the big surprise — well, she’s actually quite small. Decky Ortega (Dawn Lyn), age 6, arrives on the train. She’s an orphan and her mother, a whore quite acquainted with Lomax, has turned her over to him.

So off they head, with Lomax looking for revenge and trying to find someone to care for Decky. Naturally, over the course of their journey, he grows fond of the tyke.

Trailing them is a gun-happy youngster named Bobby Jay Jones and his two pals, Pepe and Skeeter. They’ve been hired by Foley to keep an eye on Lomas and to let him know when he’s approaching Gun Hill.

Review:

Not the Western for which anyone will remember Gregory Peck. He made just one more, the equally odd “Billy Two Hats” in 1974, which also starred Dezi Arnez Jr.

In fact, this film is so shockingly amateurish in spots that it’s hard to believe if came from Hathaway, whose Western directing credits include “True Grit,” “Rawhide,” “The Sons of Katie Elder” and “Garden of Evil.”

Don’t bother wondering how Decky’s mom knew to have the young girl delivered to the town where Lomax just happens to wind up. And try not to snicker during the romantic interlude between Lomax and second-billed Patricia Quinn.

She’s a lonely ranch owner with a bunkhouse full of cowpokes. She takes one look at Lomax and decides an ex-con, bent on revenge and looking for a place to dump his “daughter” would be the perfect answer for her loneliness.

What the film does do well is serve up moments of violence that will stick with you. Most come courtesy of Robert Lyons in the role of Bobby Jay Jones. Unfortunately, he and his buddies play their parts like they watched too many Three Stooges episodes.

Susan Tyrrell plays a much abused whore Bobby Jay kidnaps for his amusement. Rita Gam — star of a couple of 1950s Westerns — has a brief part as a woman who spends time with Lomax in the same saloon.

This was just the third film for Dawn Lyn, who plays Decky. The sister of Leif Garrett, she made her film debut in an uncredited role in “Cry Blood Apache.”

Directed by:
Henry Hathaway

Cast:
Gregory Peck … Clay Lomax
Patricia Quinn … Juliana Farrell
Robert F. Lyons … Bobby Jay Jones
Susan Tyrrell … Alma
Jeff Corey … Trooper
James Gregory … Sam Foley
Rita Gam … Emma
Dawn Lyn … Decky Ortega
Pepe Serna … Pepe
John Davis Chandler … Skeeter
Paul Fix … Brakeman
Arthur Hunnicutt … Home Page
Nicolas Beauvy … Dutch Farrell

Runtime: 95 min.

Memorable lines:

Warden, after Lomax discards the bullets in his six-gun as he’s being released from prison: “I wish you had kept those. I was counting on you gettin’ into a fix and comin’ right back here.”
Lomax: “I ain’t gettin’ into any trouble until I find the trouble I want. I’ll say this for you warden — you’ve been one mean son of a bitch.”

Alma, saloon girl, nursing a black eye, smacked by Bobby Jay Jones after she asked him to be careful with it: “I’m so dumb. I should’ve knowed. They just gotta do whatever it is a girl says they can’t.”

Trooper, offering saloon girl Alma a leech to help with her black eye: “Put one of those on your cheek, you’ll get a complexion like a newborn baby.”

Juliana Farrell, when Lomax forces her to bath: “You bastard stinkpot!”

Bobby Jay Jones: “You told me you could cook.”
Alma: “You point a gun, and I’ll tell you I can fly. And do walkin’ on water and turnin’ sticks into snakes.”

Lomax: “Your mother ever tell you who your father was?”
Juliana: “See always told me he was a good-looking bastard.”