Heaven with a Gun

The New York Times film critic, Howard Thompson, gave the film a positive review, writing, "The typical dour restraint of Glenn Ford, as an exconvict turned pistol-packing parson, is the most steadying ingredient of Heaven With a Gun, a plodding, vest-pocket Western that opened yesterday at neighborhood theaters. As a veteran of many a cattlemen-versus-sheepmen exercise, Mr. Ford plays it cool and, of course, leathery."[2]

More recently, film critic Dennis Schwartz gave the film a negative review, writing, "...[director] and writer Richard Carr load the genre pic with cliches and violent sequences. The unpleasant Western features a lynching, torture with shears, a rape, arson, a street brawl and your usual saloon gun fights. The numerous cliches include a world-weary gunfighter wanting to reform and to save the world, your typical western fight between cattlemen and sheepherders, an aging saloon keeper and whorehouse madam with a heart of gold (Carolyn Jones) longing for her unavailable old gunfighter friend and a pretty half-caste Indian (Barbara Hershey) finding it difficult to understand the white world. It preaches an awkward social conscience message that peace can be found without guns. The trouble is the pic is clumsily executed and is leaden, so everything seems absurd and hardly believable."[3]