This is a very bad western mainly because it is historically inaccurate. It looks as if it were shot on a back lot in California instead of where Jack Slade lived and died, Idaho, Colorado Territories, and Montana.
This was a good shoot-em-up western about a boy who was traumatized around the age of 10 by witnessing his father being murdered. He took the name Jack Slade and became a criminal, but never murdered anyone - sort of a likeable bad guy.
While watching this on TV the thought came to be that this is a neo-realist American Western. Then I realized it was made at the height of the Italian neo-realist craze.
It's pretty good for what it is, but in telling the tale of Slade, a hired killer for the stagecoach, the story slides too easily into sentimentality and easy ways to show things. It does have the essential theme, that Slade's humanity is lost in his profession, and this theme is effectively explored.
Jack Slade is a remarkably different western. The hero,is not handsome, but is very dirty and with each scene goes from the loved hero to the unloved bad guy.
Jack Slade accidentally kills a man when he is a young boy, and never gets over it. When his father is killed by stagecoach robbers, he goes to live with the driver that becomes like a father to him.
This is a deep, dark, western about a man who tries to fight the devils in his psyche as a gunfighter and a man who wants to settle down with a wife in a small town.....Mark Stevens gives a solid performance as Slade, a man who grew up with violence and lives with it on a near daily basis.....
I saw this as a kid and was impressed by it. Seeing it for only the second time, six-hundred and twelve months later, it STILL seems pretty good.
Low-budget Western (Allied Artists) that tries to be different and largely succeeds, but in a not very impressive way. Instead of the usual Western hero, Jack Slade is highly flawed.
