Bullets Don’t Argue Review
I’ve just returned from the 35th annual Lone Pine Film Festival!
I previewed the 2025 festival in my column here a few weeks ago. Suffice it to say the festival, which takes place in Lone Pine, California, was as enjoyable as expected. It was packed with special guests, visits to movie locations in the Alabama Hills and elsewhere, and of course movies.
I managed to see nine films at this year’s festival, including silent Westerns, “B” Westerns, and more.
Most of the movies shown at the festival are filmed in the Lone Pine area, but occasionally a “non Lone Pine” film is shown in conjunction with the appearance of a festival guest.
Such was the case with the screening of Bullets Don’t Argue (1964), a “spaghetti Western” which starred Rod Cameron. Rod’s son Tony was one of the festival guests. Tony is seen in the photo below on the left, interviewed by film historian C. Courtney Joyner prior to the screening.
Tony is an articulate speaker with many memories of his father and his career. Joel McCrea’s grandson Wyatt and his wife Lisa were among those listening intently to Tony’s interview.
Rob Word, a regular moderator at the Lone Pine Festival, videotaped an interview with Tony a couple of years ago. It can be seen on YouTube, and I highly recommend watching it to get a sense of the kind of men both Rod and Tony were and are. It’s extremely enjoyable.
I wasn’t sure if Bullets Don’t Argue would be “my kind of movie” but was pulled into trying it due to my liking of both the Camerons. I’m pleased to say that that the movie turned out to be perhaps my favorite of the nine films seen at the festival!
There’s some fascinating background to Bullets Don’t Argue, which was produced by Jolly Films contemporaneously with Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964).
While A Fistful of Dollars was directed by Sergio Leone, Bullets Don’t Argue was directed by Mario Caiano, billed as Mike Perkins.
Both films were scored by Ennio Morricone and were co-photographed by Massimo Dallamano; Dallamano was uncredited on Bullets Don’t Argue, which was also photographed by Julio Ortas. Both the cinematography and scoring add a great deal to the movie.
Bullets Don’t Argue was expected to be the more successful of this pair of Jolly films, as Rod Cameron was the bigger “name” in the early ’60s, and his movie thus had a somewhat bigger budget. We all know what happened there…
I saw A Fistful of Dollars for the first time about a year ago and liked it, though it’s the rare film I didn’t get around to reviewing. I can thus compare the two and say that while Eastwood was moving into new Western territory in his film, as the “cool,” taciturn gunfighter, Bullets Don’t Argue is very much in traditional Western territory, albeit filmed in Spain with a mostly European cast.
Bullets Don’t Argue is what Western enthusiasts such as myself like to term a “darn good Western.”
It’s a fairly old-fashioned film, in the sense that you can see some of the well-worn story beats coming a while away, but its 89 minutes move along in a brisk, engaging, and likeable fashion. The movie balances some unexpected creativity and a nice sense of humor with action and moments of poignance.
The film begins as respected Sheriff Pat Garrett (Cameron) is marrying pretty (and clearly younger) Martha (Giulia Rubini).
While the wedding is taking place, elsewhere in town the bank is being robbed by the Clanton brothers: smarter, meaner older brother Billy (Horst Frank) and his goofier, less reliable younger brother George (Angel Aranda).
Billy orders George to kill the two men who are in the bank, but when George can’t do it, Billy guns them down in cold blood.
Horst Frank is seen below as Billy; he reminded me a little of Frank Gorshin.
Garrett, ever a man of duty, must leave behind his lovely bride right after the wedding and sets off in search of the Clantons. His deputies refuse to follow him into Mexico, so from the point he crosses out of the United States he’s a man on a lonely mission.
Garrett catches up with the Clantons fairly quickly; the main thrust of the story is his challenges bringing them to justice. Banditos after the stolen money Garrett’s recovered don’t make things any easier.
Isolated rancher Agnes (Vivi Bach) and her younger brother Mike (Luis Duran) prove to be needed allies to Garrett on multiple occasions.
As with many Westerns with familiar plots, the joy of this film is in how well the story is told. I was frankly bowled over with most aspects of the film, including the music and cinematography.
I was rather stunned by how much the film reminded me of some of the Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher Westerns filmed in Lone Pine. Cameron, like Scott, is an older, righteous man who dispenses justice wisely, sometimes with a wry sense of humor.
Like Scott, we’re never really concerned for Cameron’s character even though he’s older than the men he comes up against; he has wisdom and savvy based on years of experience. Cameron is completely likeable in the role, and I found it a real pleasure to discover this part of his long career for the first time.
Cameron, incidentally, would later play Pat Garrett again in The Last Movie (1971) directed by Dennis Hopper.
Frank and Aranda are quite good as the Clantons. Billy, the more bloodthirsty of the two, inexplicably carries and reads from a Bible, which leads to a beautifully photographed moment late in the film.
Aranda gradually transforms into someone more likeable who grows to “see the light” thanks to both Garrett and Agnes. His evolution is believable, given that he has been under his powerful older brother’s sway and that his initial instincts were to refuse his brother’s orders to kill. Garrett’s eventual decision on George’s fate was well received by this viewer.
Rubini only appears in the film’s opening scenes and is more of a placeholder character who helps fill in the opening of the story, while Bach has a much more substantial role as Agnes.
Bach is likeable as brave Agnes, though the character doesn’t run especially deep. I’ll add that while Rubin has a fairly “normal” hairstyle, Bach unfortunately has the “bubble hair” which immediately labels a Western as being from the ’60s.
For other examples of anachronistic ’60s “big hair” in Westerns see Ruta Lee in The Gun Hawk (1963), Martha Hyer in The Night of the Grizzly (1966), or Lola Albright in The Way West (1967). These hairstyles always scream “made in the ’60s!”
Bullets Don’t Argue has been released on DVD and at the time of this writing may be streamed on Amazon Prime.
As a postscript to tie this review’s mention of Clint Eastwood back to Lone Pine and the film festival, I refer readers to my 2024 review of Joe Kidd (1972), which was filmed in Lone Pine.
I very much recommend Bullets Don’t Argue – and the Lone Pine Film Festival! I hope to see some of my readers there in 2026.
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– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub
Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.
Laura, first of all thank you for taking us riding along with you to the Lone Pine Film Festival by way of your writeups and photographs. I always really enjoy it, and I learn a lot.
BULLETS DON’T ARGUE(1964) does have a fascinating background story because of its production attachment to the much more famous and influential A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS(1964). Both were Italian/West German productions using for the most part the same production crew. Also, Mario Caiano the director of BULLETS DON’T ARGUE was an assistant director on A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.
BULLETS DON’T ARGUE had the larger budget and Rod Cameron. A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS got the leftovers, so to speak. Director Mario Caiano wanted his movie to look as much like an American Western as he could make it. I think he accomplished that in making it a traditional Western and a “darn good one” to boot. Even Ennio Morricone’s music score is traditional. The movie was filmed in the beautiful landscapes of Almeria, Spain with a good international cast from Canada/USA, West Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Czechoslovakia.
Yes, Sheriff Pat Garrett’s(Rod Cameron) bride Martha Coogan(Giulia Rubini) is pretty and younger, but we’re used to that in movies and in real life. Cameron was 24 years older than Rubini and the real Pat Garrett was 11 years older than his wife Apolinaria “Pauline” Gutierrez Garrett. The movie wedding scene is somewhat HIGH NOONish.
We have the Clanton brothers Billy(Horst Frank) and George(Angel Aranda) riding into their hometown to rob the bank. There was an actual Billy Clanton in the old West, and he was killed in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. It used to bother me when writers would take famous names like Pat Garrett and Billy Clanton and drop them in fictional stories like this one, but it really doesn’t anymore, because I realize that reel Westerns and the real West are two different entities.
The inexplicableness of a New Testament which includes Proverbs and Psalms, being carried and quoted by the bloodthirsty Billy Clanton is a curio. Although, people in the old West read the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plays of Shakespeare, National Police Gazette, Dime and Half-Dime novels, as well as the Penny Dreadfuls.
An unexpected touch was the photograph of Agnes Goddard’s(Vivi Bach) parents, which is a print of the actual photograph of Harry Longabaugh(Sundance Kid) and Etta Place taken in New York City in 1901.
I never viewed BULLETS DON’T ARGUE back in the day, because I don’t think it ever was shown in my neck of the woods. I finally caught up with it on YouTube in 2021 and was pleasantly surprised in how good it is. I think it’s a good solid traditional Western well worth viewing.
Thank you for the wonderful write-up and I look forward to the next one.