Rimfire

1949 "Every Man's Back Was A Target For His VENGEANCE!"
5.7| 1h3m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 25 March 1949 Released
Producted By: Screen Guild Productions
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

An undercover Army captain links missing gold and murder to a gambler's ghost.

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Screen Guild Productions

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Reviews

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.
Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.
Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
mark.waltz When a gambler known as "The Abilene Kid" is tried, convicted and hung for the apparent robbery of the U.S. Gold mint, his spirit seems to return from beyond to haunt and ultimately kill the men who framed him. Everybody in this small western town is running scared, and it is up to a U.S. agent (James Millican) to get to the bottom of this with the help of the local sheriff (Victor Kilian) and his pretty niece (Mary Beth Hughes) who falls in love with him. The slow-moving first half of this rather short B western moves into quite a different mood as it changes to ghost story. Or is it? Like Scooby Doo and other ghost movie spoofs where somebody is obviously using the events of the recent past to get information on the location of the gold. But who is it, and how does the U.S. agent discover the identity? Or is it really a voice from beyond scaring people literally to their doom? This western has various elements of its structure which makes it a rank above the standard cowboy/Indian shoot em' out, but the plot is pretty obvious of where it is going. The photography in the ghostly visits is appropriately dark which adds much needed mood. In spite of obvious plot holes, the film remains an interesting change from the typical western fare audiences were getting at the time. George Cleveland provides some wit as a local judge, while some cornball humor is thrown in by Fuzzy Knight. Another plus with the DVD is the print transfer is quite outstanding, making it look much higher budgeted than many of the public domain transfers of B westerns from Monogram, PRC and other poverty row studios which released dozens of these every year.
bkoganbing If I was writing the script of Rimfire I might have taken this story in an entirely different direction. I think the film had a lot of potential. When first looking at it I was thinking it might be a harbinger of what Clint Eastwood did in High Plains Drifter. If you remember Clint is an other world figure who exacts a terrible vengeance on everyone in his film.Here Reed Hadley is a luckless gambler the Abilene Kid who gets himself nicely framed for a gold robbery and murder after first being falsely accused of card cheating. After that a whole lot of people start dying and their left with playing cards near the body. The spade suit is used and it goes right into the picture cards.James Millican who is normally a good character actor is the lead here along with Hadley and he never believed Hadley was guilty. He's an army captain on detached duty for the Secret Service and sheriff Victor Killian makes him a deputy.The ending is rather strange and disjointed as well. I will say a good red herring is given as the leader of the gang, but the final showdown left a lot to be desired.Rimfire is interesting and certainly has its supporters, but I think it fails in the execution.
GManfred This is a good little western from Lippert studios, and I don't understand the low rating by IMDb reviewers. The film is a mystery story and is well-written, taut and compact, and in only 64 minutes. The cast, led by James Millican, does a uniformly good job, and there is nary a bad acting performance in sight from the supporting cast. One is taken aback by seeing suave, urbane Reed Hadley out in the scrubbrush, but it turns out he's the suave, urbane gambler in the story.Now, we're not talking MGM or Paramount here and so you have to consider economics, but production values are better than expected and there is a good deal of action during this just-over-an-hour affair. Overlook a couple of plot holes and a time-killing romance and you have an entertaining movie which has been unfairly neglected over the years. This was included in a DVD with "Little Big Horn", which is a better picture, but nevertheless, "Rimfire" is still a cut above.
FightingWesterner The Abiline Kid is set up and convicted by a Kangaroo court for using marked cards. Executed by hanging, he seemingly returns as a ghost to terrorize and wreak vengeance on the guilty town that murdered him.Rimfire is loaded with great character actors, including James Millican, Reed Hadley, Jason Robards Sr., and Fuzzy Knight, alongside two previous Universal monsters, The Werewolf Of London's Henry Hull and Glen Strange, the last of the classic Frankenstein monsters!Although it's running time could (and should) have been stretched a little for greater suspense, this is still an entertaining, if compact, western whodunit with lots of great scenes.It can also be viewed as sort of a forerunner (along with Django Il Bastardo) to Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter. In fact, the three would make a great triple feature.