[2] In 1897 Arizona, female outlaw Abby Nixon warns lawman Billy Reynolds that her accomplices Bud and Cole Gorman are nearby.

Reynolds kills both men in a gunfight, but finds himself arrested for murder, convicted and sentenced to a desert prison known as Devil's Canyon.

She frees Reynolds, who takes control of the guards' machine-gun nest, kills Jesse and orders the others back to their cells.

[5] In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "Outside of a couple of seedy specimens, played by Arthur Hunnicutt and Jay C. Flippen, the yarn is as flat as the desert on which the prison is set.

"[6] Reviewer Hortense Morton of the San Francisco Examiner wrote: "'Devil's Canyon' is as violent as a volcano and director Alfred Werker has polished every facet of the Frederick Hazlitt Brennan screen play until life within the walls of a prison in Territorial Arizona becomes just as realistic as any law-abiding citizen can handle in one dose.