Present-day reviewers have reviled the film for its stereotypical and demeaning portrayal of the plantation""s cook Hoy (Willie Fung), o provide unnecessary ""comic relief.The two new arrivals objected vigorously to giving up heir weapons to an unknown authority: "You must have a real good reason to ask a man to do a fool thing like that!" The befuddled, benign man then realized he must formally introduce himself - he was the town""s US Marshal, Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) - portrayed as a folksy, atypical, slightly effeminate Western lawman...and a man""s desires!"...maybe it""s better for both of us to leave each other alone."Writer/producer/director Robert Rossen, also known for his earlier contributions to the screenplays ofThe Roaring Twenties (1939)andThe Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948),Body and Soul (1947), Best Picture winnerAll the King""s Men (1949), and his last filmLilith (1964), based this harsh, poignant, intensely dramatic film (with co-writer Sydney Carroll), a morality play, upon the novel of the same name by Walter Tevis.When she rides "through lovers"" brains," they dream of love.Whomever she visits, they dream of their greatest desires.If she rides over ladies"" lips, hey dream of kisses.But she also can be angry and mischievious, causing soldiers to be startled awake in the midst of real battle - "sometimes she driveth o""er a soldier""s neck and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes; and being hus frighted, swears a prayer or two, and sleeps again.