A Gunfighter's Pledge

A Gunfighter's Pledge
Promotional poster used for guerrilla marketing campaign
Written by	Jim Byrnes
Directed by	Armand Mastroianni
Starring	Luke Perry C. Thomas Howell Kim Coates Jaclyn DeSantis
Theme music composer	Nathan Furst
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
Production
Producer(s)	Larry Levinson
Cinematography	James W. Wrenn
Editor(s)	Colleen Halsey
Running time	79 minutes
Release
Original network	Hallmark Channel
Original release	July 5, 2008 (2008-07-05)

A Gunfighter's Pledge (the working title was The Pledge) is a 2008 Western television film starring Luke Perry. The film premiered on Hallmark Channel in July 2008. It was filmed at Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California.

Ex-lawman Matt Austin (Luke Perry) accidentally kills an innocent man (Alex Paez) while hunting an outlaw who killed his family. He pledges to the dying man that he will take his body to his sister Amaya (Jaclyn DeSantis). Austin wrestles with the idea of telling her he caused the death, but is faced with bigger battles once at the farm. There he gets involved with land baron Horn (C. Thomas Howell), who is trying to take Amaya's land. Their lives are more intertwined than he thought, when he takes on Horn and discovers that Horn has hired the man he was looking for all along.

Hallmark Channel employed guerilla marketing tactics to promote the movie. The network dispatched 20 cowboys each day from June 30 through July 2 in various places, including Times Square and Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, and Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles. Over the three days, the cowboys engaged onlookers in showdowns and deputized locals with sheriff’s badges featuring tune-in information for the film. Wild postings in the form of Old west-style wanted posters featuring an ink-block likeness of Luke Perry’s character, Matt Austin, and the phrase, "a sheriff with nothing to lose" were also put up around the cities.