Hollywood legend Barbara Stanwyck saddled up with writer-director Samuel Fuller for the pulp maestro’s most audacious western, a boldly feminist spin on the genre that pivots effortlessly between ribald humor, visceral action, and disarming tenderness. High-riding rancher Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck) commands a forty-strong posse of cowboys, ruling Cochise County, Arizona, without challenge. When U.S. Marshal Griff Bonell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers arrive in town with a warrant for one of her hired guns, Jessica begins to fall for the lawman even as he chips away at her authority. With astonishing black-and-white CinemaScope photography, hard-boiled dialogue laced with double entendres, and a fiery performance by Stanwyck at her most imperious, Forty Guns is a virtuoso display of Fuller’s sharpshooting talents.
SPECIAL FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New interview with director Samuel Fuller’s widow, Christa Lang Fuller, and daughter, Samantha Fuller
A Fuller Life (2013), a feature-length documentary by Samantha Fuller about her father, featuring filmmakers Wim Wenders, William Friedkin, and Monte Hellman; actors Mark Hamill, James Franco, Jennifer Beals, Bill Duke, and Constance Towers; and others
Audio interview with Samuel Fuller at London’s National Film Theatre from 1969
New interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
Stills gallery
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Lisa Dombrowski and a chapter from Fuller’s posthumously published 2002 autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking
RUN TIME: 80 minutes
COLOR: Black & White
ASPECT RATIO: 2.35:1
GENRE: Westerns-Classics
LANGUAGE: English