Written and directed by Samuel Fuller, the independent[2] black-and-white picture was filmed in CinemaScope and released by 20th Century Fox.

In the 1880s, Griff Bonnell, and his brothers, Wes and Chico, arrive in the town of Tombstone in Cochise County, Arizona.

Griff is a reformed gunslinger, now working for the Attorney General's office, looking to arrest Howard Swain for mail robbery.

She runs the territory with an iron fist, permitting the town to be terrorized and trashed by her brother, Brockie Drummond, and his boys.

Fuller uses every opportunity to show off the widescreen format while employing extensive use of close-ups and one of the longest tracking shots ever done at Fox’s studio at that time – over five minutes long.

Fuller later repeatedly claimed that the ending he wanted involved Griff killing Jessica to get Brockie and the studio overruled him.

Despite the poetic bursts of violence in Fuller’s signature shock images, the hero knows that the land will soon belong to the sedate townsfolk on whose behalf he honorably plies his loathsome trade.