The Last Day (1975)

Trash Draws Flies! The Last Day is directed by Vincent McEveety and collectively written by Jim Byrnes, Steve Fisher and A.C. Lyles (Lyles also produces). It stars Richard Widmark, Barbara Rush, Robert Conrad, Richard Jaeckel, Tim Matheson, Christopher Connelly, Tom Skerritt Tom Skerritt and Loretta Swit. Music is by Jerrold Immel and cinematography by Robert B. Hauser. Harry Morgan narrates. Film is about the events leading up to, and including, the Dalton Gang's attempted robbery of two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kansas, October 5th 1892. After some nifty opening credits that shift between whimsy and dramatic stills, pic settles into beefy characterisations, focusing on the three days before the robbery. Here we get to know the Dalton Gang members, their plotting, their peccadilloes, their goals, their loves and their egos (Bob Dalton wants to better Jesse James). "Get yourself killed for a town that doesn't want you"? Back in Coffeyville, retired gunfighter Will Spence (Widmark) is the key player. He has settled down with his wife Betty (Rush), but Bob Dalton (Conrad) wants Spence out the picture. As soon as the town gets wind that the Dalton's are nearby, they get in a tizzy and start to remind Spence of his past, thinking he's the cause of imminent danger. Again, we get to know the principal players here in town, with a grand old barn dust-up as a side-bar to raise the pulse. Everything is gearing up towards the day of reckoning, the day that is famous in Western history. The actual events were recorded as 13 minutes, and give or take a minute, this filmic version is close to real time, and it's corking! The suspense of the robberies is coiled spring like, and then the carnage begins, shoot-outs galore, high grade stunts, every minute is well worth waiting for. It asks you to be patient for its first hour, then it picks up a pace, then it delivers the goods with gunpowder on top. Yes there's messages here, and of course genre formula, but this is historically informative, exciting, and performed with skill by an impressive cast. File it under one of the better TV Westerns and see it if you can. 7/10