Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

HeadlinesExotic Boring

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

MartinHafer "Rimfire" is an odd western for several reasons. First, the film really has no stars in it--just lots and lots of B and C-list supporting actors. Second, the plot itself is rather diffuse and meandering. This doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad film--just not exactly typical.The film starts with an aborted stage coach robbery and it sure looks as if the film is about an evil boss-man in town whose lackeys are committing the robberies. Well, it ISN'T about this--though the first portion of the film is. The Abilene Kid is a gambler who is accused of using marked cards. In a VERY unlawful sort of hearing, the guy is railroaded and hung. Then the weird stuff begins--those responsible for the handing out this injustice are killed off one after another--with a playing card left with their corpses. You'd think the film is about some sort of ghost--but it turns out not to be. Then, out of the blue, a shipment of stolen United States gold is discovered around the same time the killer is discovered--leading the viewer to wonder exactly what was the film about, anyway?! The bottom line is that this is not even a B-western--it's more of a C-western with poor writing and an odd assortment of minor actors. Not terrible...but also not very good.

bkoganbing If I was writing the script of Rimfire I might have taken this story in an entirely different direction. I think the film had a lot of potential. When first looking at it I was thinking it might be a harbinger of what Clint Eastwood did in High Plains Drifter. If you remember Clint is an other world figure who exacts a terrible vengeance on everyone in his film.Here Reed Hadley is a luckless gambler the Abilene Kid who gets himself nicely framed for a gold robbery and murder after first being falsely accused of card cheating. After that a whole lot of people start dying and their left with playing cards near the body. The spade suit is used and it goes right into the picture cards.James Millican who is normally a good character actor is the lead here along with Hadley and he never believed Hadley was guilty. He's an army captain on detached duty for the Secret Service and sheriff Victor Killian makes him a deputy.The ending is rather strange and disjointed as well. I will say a good red herring is given as the leader of the gang, but the final showdown left a lot to be desired.Rimfire is interesting and certainly has its supporters, but I think it fails in the execution.

GManfred This is a good little western from Lippert studios, and I don't understand the low rating by IMDb reviewers. The film is a mystery story and is well-written, taut and compact, and in only 64 minutes. The cast, led by James Millican, does a uniformly good job, and there is nary a bad acting performance in sight from the supporting cast. One is taken aback by seeing suave, urbane Reed Hadley out in the scrubbrush, but it turns out he's the suave, urbane gambler in the story.Now, we're not talking MGM or Paramount here and so you have to consider economics, but production values are better than expected and there is a good deal of action during this just-over-an-hour affair. Overlook a couple of plot holes and a time-killing romance and you have an entertaining movie which has been unfairly neglected over the years. This was included in a DVD with "Little Big Horn", which is a better picture, but nevertheless, "Rimfire" is still a cut above.

VernC Ignored even when it was released this B western is akin to Audie Murphy's "No Name on the Bullet" as it is a different kind of western, actually a suspense/mystery in a western setting, not a horse opera at all. The cast is an ensemble of reliable character actors doing what they do.This one is probably lost for ever, but it is an example of what can be accomplished on a starvation budget when a little creativity is applied.IT'S THE WRITING, STUPID!