“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 Western still elicits from aficionados-the above is from Brian Garfield-who cannot fail to notice how 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. 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 his 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 against three newly arrived lawman brothers. Plotlines notwithstanding, no one would mistake Forty Guns for Ford's My Darling Clementine. Fuller's is highly recommended for anyone who thinks of the Western as a predictable genre.