This Bleak Gunsmoke Episode Gave Matt Dillon His Most Brutal Kill
In its early black-and-white, half-hour run, Gunsmoke could turn unexpectedly grim. Season 3’s "The Cabin," written by John Meston and adapted from the radio series, sends Marshal Matt Dillon away from Dodge City into a blizzard and a snowbound cabin where violence and despair have already taken hold.
Matt (James Arness) discovers the owner dead and the daughter, Belle (Patricia Barry), held by two bandits, Hack and Alvy, played by Claude Akins and Harry Dean Stanton. A desperate struggle follows: Matt fights back, Hack shoots his partner as the light goes out, and a last-resort attack with a pitchfork becomes the episode’s most brutal death, conveyed through quick cuts, stark shadow and suggestive sound rather than graphic imagery.
The radio version, voiced by William Conrad, lays the scene out more explicitly, describing the marshal lifting the villain and impaling him with the fork.