Some westerns don't allow people to change, or reform, during its run on the screen. "Yellow Sky" allows peoples' true natures to emerge, once the influence of a gold strike in a near-empty ghost town appears. Filmed in b&w in 1948, the film stars a youthful Gregory Peck, a starlet named Anne Baxter, and a superb villainous performance by Richard Widmark.
The story begins with the band of outlaws, led by Peck, hold up a town and escape the clutches of the law by fleeing to the desert sands. They can't go back, because the legal authorities will capture them, and they have to continue to cross the flats, with an ever-dwindling water supply. One outlaw, in fact, filled his canteen with whiskey in the town they held up, and now he's begging to swap a belt of whiskey for just one sip of cool water.
Finally, just before giving up all hope, the band comes to a town called Yellow Sky, which once prospered, but now has all but expired. The two remaining occupants of the town, Anne Baxter and her grandfather, agree to let them rest, spend a few days, and that's when the outlaw band, or rather, Widmark, figures out that the two have a gold strike in the mountains nearby. Why else would they stay in a town going nowhere? Peck wishes to split the gold claim with the two occupants, while the rest of the gang, spurred on by Widmark, desires the whole cache, and if Peck doesn't agree, then they can fix that problem, too. The final shootout in the ghostly buildings of Yellow Sky resolves the conflict.
Look for good supporting performances from John Russell and Harry Morgan, as two outlaw gang members, and providing comic relief is Charles Kemper, whose career in the movies came to an end just a few years after this film was released. He plays the whiskey-guzzling Walrus to the hilt, and some film viewers would wish he had left more film roles on the screen. Overall feelings, a solid 8/10, and happy to see the release of this western classic on DVD.
