Return of the Gunfighter (1967)

Apparently Metro Goldwyn Mayer, while giving the movie a theatrical release overseas, sent this western directly to television in North America. It's pretty easy to see why MGM wasn't totally confident that the movie would attract domestic audiences. The script is the main problem. The story is made up of many elements and plot turns you will have seen in countless westerns before; I bet even audiences in 1967 found the story clichéd. Not only that, the script insults the audience by taking more than half of the movie to set everything up; there's no reason why it should have taken so long for this creaky story to define everything. Also, that first half of the movie is pretty dull, with almost no action or anything else that might be considered lively. The second half of the movie is a bit more energetic, but it's too little and too late. Why the present owners of the movie thought it was worth a DVD release through their on demand video line, I cannot say.