Alfred L. Werker's Three Hours to Kill (1954)

 I've written how the conventions of film noir can elevate even routine films and that's also true of the Western.  Werker's Three Hours to Kill is obviously influenced by Fred Zinneman's High Noon (1952) and William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).  In Wellman's film Dana Andrews is lynched for something he didn't do while in Werker's film the attempted lynching fails, Dana Andrews's Jim Guthrie escapes and comes back three years later to find out who killed the man whose murder was blamed on Guthrie. Guthrie's friend Sherrif Ben East (Stephen Elliot) gives Guthrie three hours to find the real killer.

There are plenty of suspects, Niles (Richard Coogan), who has married Guthrie's sweetheart Laurie Mastin (Donna Reed) while Guthrie was on the run, and gambler Marty (Laurence Hugo), part of a menage-a-troi with Betty (Charlotte Fletcher) and Polly (Carolyn Jones); practically everyone in the town took part in the attempted lynching and they all had a reason to murder the victim, Carter (Richard Webb).  When Guthrie finds the real killer he kills him in a gun battle and rides off, realizing that he and Laurie can never be together again.  Guthrie, however, is followed by dance hall girl Chris Palmer (Dianne Foster), who had always loved him; it's an unusual twist in Westen iconography. 

Although one often thinks of Dana Andrews as the urban figure from his films with Otto Preminger and Fritz Lang he also did a number of excellent Westerns, including Jacques Tourneur's Canyon Passage (1946).  Alfred L. Werker was also better known for his film noirs (They Walked by Night, 1948) though he did a number of interesting Westerns near the end of his career;  he made four films after Three Hours to Kill and though his direction is intelligant and often subtle credit also goes to cinematographer Charles Lawton, Jr. and producer Harry Joe Brown.  Lawton started as a cinematographer in 1937 and worked with John Ford and Budd Boetticher, among many other directors, and helped to create the beautiful palette -- browns, blues and yellow -- of Three Hours to Kill.  Harry Joe Brown went on to produce Boetticher's superb Westerns with Randolph Scott.