Gretchen Corbett was 27 when this episode was filmed, the same year she joined James Garner on The Rockford Files as Jim Rockford's attorney. Here she is playing a saloon girl in the town were the villains are going to rob the big bank.
Corbett looks more like 17 than 27. She has a sweet beauty, and she is dressed in a really nice dress. As often happened on Gunsmoke, the guest actress is part of a group of sleazy characters and she is dressed a lot better than the rest of her group. In this case, the other saloon girls all look trashy, but she looks like she is dressed for the prom. Corbett literally sparkles in every scene.
She also has great dialogue. She comes across as pretty, smart and tough, just like she would do in The Rockford Files. For reasons unknown, she likes one of the villains, the only young guy, Pryor. As was the formula on Gunsmoke, one young villain can usually be redeemed from the dark side.
Festus and Doc Adams are not in this episode. Amanda Blake quit the series the previous season. Only Muley Newly is available to tag along with his moronic wonderment and fear of shooting anyone. Dillon soon gets rid of him and sends him on an errand.
The actual story is really stupid. A bunch of filthy slobs rob a bank in Dodge, and then they miraculously find Army uniforms abandoned in a wagon, and they transform, and decide to ride into another town as the Cavalry. The moronic sheriff of that town is played by Med Flory, who made a career out of playing dim-witted characters. He immediately believes the story that Indians are coming, and gets everyone in town to evacuate. Not a very Western attitude, since you would think they would stay to defend their town.
Why did they need everyone to leave town just so they could rob the bank? Why did Matt Dillon get caught as soon as he arrived in town? Why didn't he kill any of the villains? They were going to kill Dillon.
This episode had several very good actors as villains. Ramon Bieri, Ron Soble, and Lance LeGault (the werewolf hunter in the Werewolf TV series 1987). They should have put up a good gun-fight against Matt Dillon. The real star of this episode is Gretchen Corbett. She steals every scene, and she has the best dialogue by far.