Warlock (1959) review

The town of Warlock is having a hard time dealing with the "murderous cowboys" led by Abe McQuown (Tom Drake) so they hire renowned gunslinger Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda) to take care of them and he brings with him his "old friend" Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn) - later, Johnny Gannon (Richard Widmark), who used to tag along with his brother Billy (Frank Gorshin) and the other thugs, volunteers to be Clay's new deputy.  It goes through the paces with painfully unimaginative direction (Dmytryk was no Howard Hawks) and some of the decisions by the characters (especially Tom at the conclusion) are frankly baffling, but there are bits and pieces in there that might trick a few viewers into thinking it's more complex than it appears, like the presence of two blondes, "bad" Lily Dollar (Dorothy Malone) and "good" Jessie (Dolores Michaels), and the "peculiar" relationship between Clay and Tom: when the former kills the latter, is he "eliminating" his queerness?  I haven't read the novel it's based on (by Oakley Hall), but it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is a favorite of American novelist Thomas Pinecone ... so something was most likely lost in the adaptation.