The Duel at Silver Creek (1952)

[Posted at The Blackboard.]

I have never seen Don Siegel's 1952 color Western The Duel at Silver Creek, with Audie Murphy, Stephen McNally, and Faith Domergue, mentioned as an off-genre noir. But I watched it tonight through Netflix streaming, and I think it qualifies: it's got a noir-like narration by McNally, a lynch mob, a preponderance of night scenes in the mid-section, and, most pertinently, a femme fatale who is an actual cold-blooded, on-screen murderess. I can't think of another such in any Western I've seen from that era. Check this film out, it's interesting. It's a bit of a Johnny Guitar precursor, too: most of the characters have campy nicknames such as Lightning, Rat Face, Dusty, and Brown Eyes, and the outfits worn by Audie Murphy's Silver Kid and Eugene Iglesias's Johnny Sombrero are positively pimpin'.