I never liked this western. The brutality, for me, was shocking. Especially for the early 60's. The part when the psychopath, played by Martin Landau, takes the female doctor (a truly emancipated and positive character) and repeatedly beats and rapes her is one of the most ugly moments I've ever heard in movies. Thankfully it happens in a tent and you never see it, but you definitely hear it. Ugh and Yuck. Spare yourself.

In contrast to what was said in the four other reviews, I found this film quite entertaining. Sure, the cast, apart from Martin Landau, was low key, but the acting was reasonable.

I was surprised at some of the violence, but then STDR was made in the early 60s, when more grittiness was being introduced into Westerns.

But I agree with others about the terrible ballads.

This chintzy, cheesy B western looks like it was cranked out in just a few days, something to be expected from a low-rent outfit like PRC or Lippert, or even Monogram, but not from a major studio like Universal, where this came from. Then again, Universal's fortunes in the early 1960s were on their way down, so maybe this boring little oater wasn't as atypical as one might think. Anyway, it's a limp story of passengers ejected from a stagecoach when the crew suspects that one or more of them might have contracted smallpox. There's no tension (or sense or logic) in Kenneth Darling's script, there's no pacing (or imagination or much of anything) in Earl Bellamy's direction, and the actors either overact outrageously or underplay to the point of catatonia. Cheap looking, predictable and not worth a first look, let alone a second. There are better ways to waste your time.