The Civil War is about to break out and the Kansas Pacific railroad is running into delays laying track through bloody Kansas.
The U.S. Army wants the railroad completed to serve as a gateway to the forts in the West should war come. Southern sympathizers want to slow or halt the project for the same reasons.
So the Army sends Capt. John Nelson (Sterling Hayden) West to oversee the project. He receives a cool welcome from the folks already on the job — the lead construction engineer Cal Bruce (Barton MacLane), his daughter Barbara (Eve Miller) and Smokestack (Harry Shannon).
Bill Quantrill (Reed Hadley) isn’t too happy to see him show up either. Unbeknownst to everyone, he’s been orchestrating the construction delays by planting Southerners among the railroad crews.
Nelson quickly proves he’s up to the task at hand and wins over the cooperation of Cal Bruce. Winning over his pretty daughter might prove more difficult.
Review:
This making-of-a-railroad film is ordinary and predictable in every possible way, providing excitement only when Quantrill’s men snatch a couple of cannons and blast a train to bits.
Hayden is as wooden as ever in the lead role; Hadley plays a more sophisticated and less demented Quantrill than you’ll find in most depictions of the Rebel raider.
This marked one of only a handful of female leading roles for Eve Miller, and they usually came in Westerns. She also starred with Kirk Douglas in “The Big Trees” (1952) and in the Charles Starrett series Western “Buckaroo from Powder River” (1947). She committed suicide in 1973 at age 50.
Familiar Western faces Clayton Moore and James Griffith have minor roles here — Moore as a Quantrill henchman; Griffith as a railroad guard.
Directed by:
Ray Nazarro
Cast:
Sterling Hayden … John Nelson
Barton MacLane … Cal Bruce
Eve Miller … Barabara Bruce
Harry Shannon … Smokestack
Reed Hadley … Bill Quantrill
Douglas Fowley … Max Janus
Robert Keys … Lt. Stanton
Irving Bacon … Casey
Myron Healey .. Morey
James Griffith … Joe Farley
Clayton Moore . Stone
Jonathan Hale … Sherman Johnson
Runtime: 73 min.
Memorable lines:
Cal Bruce to his daughter Barbara: “Are you going to drink that coffee or are you just going to stir it until it evaporates?”
Barbara Bruce: “Dad, don’t you start talking about a war too. What’s the sense worrying about something that will probably never happpen?”
Cal Bruce: “If we worry enough, maybe it won’t happen.”
Quantrill: “You’re a dangerous man, Mr. Nelson.”
Nelson: “There are others around much more dangerous.”
Smokestack, after John Nelson discovers that an explosion of supplies and death of one of his workers wasn’t an accident: “Looks like we’re already in the war everybody keeps talking about.”
Nelson: “This is worse than war. In a war, at least you know who you’re fighting.”
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