Forty guns /

Backed by her legion of pistol-packing cowhands, iron-fisted Arizona ranch owner Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) rules over Tombstone, running roughshod over the law until she meets her match in gunslinger-turned-marshal Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan). "A high-ridin' woman with a whip," as the theme song goes, this female cattle baron is not saddled to the typical 1957 Western. Showily expressive camera work such as a POV shot from inside a gun barrel exemplifies Fuller's (Steel Helmet; Pickup on South Street) brash angle on a normally staid genre. A feature-length doc on Fuller's life and career, a critical appraisal, and remembrances by his family round out Criterion's on-target release. In 1969, the formerly blacklisted Polonsky returned to directing with a morally complex Western featuring Robert Redford as a conflicted sheriff forced to hunt down a Native American man (Robert Blake) wanted for murder. But the killing really was in self-defense over a woman (Katharine Ross), with politics exacerbating what otherwise would have been an insignificant incident. Part of an emerging trend of revisionist oaters, Willie Boy blurs the distinction between the white hat and black hat wearers. VERDICT Disparate Westerns from distinct eras do the genre proud in freshly restored editions for devotees.--Jeff T. Dick, Davenport, IA