cult film freak: HARRY LAUTER, HANNA LANDY & JOE PATRIDGE IN 'CONVICT STAGE'

Title: CONVICT STAGE Year: 1965 Rating: ****

Two venomous outlaw brothers are on "Top of the World, ma" for their Ma Jarrett type Hanna Landy, the scene-stealer of CONVICT STAGE...

A b-Western with a tight, contained story to fit the tight, contained setting of a ghost town where all the (surviving) characters wind up, including a tough old sheriff and Harry Lauter as a gunfighter, whose sister is murdered during a prologue that ignites a revenge plot-line that doesn't completely own the programmer as often happens...

And yet, only the revenge-seeker's wife is consumed by it.. by hating it... threatening to leave if he kills cold-blooded siblings Joe Patridge and Eric Matthews who, given more time and a bigger budget, could have made a great antagonist duo...

But there's still some cool sporadic action in several dusty locales as the brothers are taken by that titular coach to/towards jail, and that's where (as her phantom gang prepares elsewhere) resilient mom Hanna Landy comes in...

And right under sheriff Don 'Red' Barry's nose as one of several supposedly mundane passengers, also including the ingenue/wife and a few other gruff gun-toting cowboys, who wind up in a cliché, very rushed shoot-em-up finale (straight from a Knott's Berry Farm main street reenactment) — but only because of the essential time spent building the characters and motivations since in CONVICT STAGE, everyone's got something either hidden up their sleeve or bleeding right outside it.