"An abomination...brutal and dehumanizing trash...the most vicious Western of the 1950s. It reeks of sexual sadism and moral perversion." Such is the response that Sam Fuller's greatest film still elicits from Western aficionados-the above is from Brian Garfield-who cannot fail to notice how all the time-tested conventions of the "classic" tradition turn arbitrary here. Only Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar approaches Forty Guns as a woman-centric explosion of violence, sexuality, and power. But Fuller's is the more visceral movie-with its screaming high-key lighting tied to virtuoso tracking shots and masterful wide-screen composition. "The Woman with the Whip" was Fuller's original title (which survives in the theme song, from a chorus of bathing men). Barbara Stanwyck plays the whip-woman, the self-made matriarch of Tombstone, backed by her forty gunmen and set against three newly arrived lawmen brothers. Plotlines notwithstanding, no one would mistake Forty Guns for John Ford's Tombstone tale, My Darling Clementine. Fuller's is highly recommended for those who shun the Western as a predictable genre. Scott Simmon