Ride Lonesome

Beautifully-filmed Budd Boetticher outdoor saga, one in a series of westerns the filmmaker produced with star Randolph Scott (usually from a screenplay by writer Burt Kennedy), involves former sheriff-turned-bounty hunter attempting to bring in wanted killer across desolate Arizona terrain, inadvertently coming to the aid of shapely widow whose husband was captured and killed by Indians. Film opens with terrific desert stand-off, but rather quickly lapses into genre clichés with the arrival of two randy gunmen (Pernell Roberts and a debuting James Coburn) paying the lady a hostile visit. Aside from Charles Lawton Jr.'s glorious color cinematography, Randolph Scott's unruffled, low-key charm is really the only thing this routine adventure has going for it. Dialogue scenes are stilted, as is the male camaraderie. ** from ****

Tight, efficient western story (not a "saga") about a man who uses a prisoner to get his brother into the open for revenge. In the meantime he strings along a beautiful stranded woman and 2 outlaws who hope to kill Scott and turn his prisoner in for a pardon for themselves. The climax before the evil-looking "hanging tree" is very impressive, although the film could have built Van Cleef into a stronger villain (perhaps the realism of a villain who isn't all that bad was part of the plan). Excellent synergy of all the vital elements by the director in this, one of the best of the famed (and hard to find) Ranown films.