I didn't discover the collaborations between director Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott until the 1990s, when their films started to air regularly on TCM and then on the Westerns Channel. The best of them are written by Burt Kennedy. His scripts are terse, lean, and minimalist, with stoic flinty characters, desperate premises and gutsy, primal themes. The young writer starting out on his career, the director whose career had stalled, and the star whose popularity had declined pushed aggression, ambivalence, and violence further than the westerns had gone before. Kennedy didn't write the three town-based stories that could be shot on a backlot. Of the three, I prefer Buchanan Rides Alone (1956) for its Old Tucson Studio location, the most authentic and rugged outdoor street and surrounding park ever devoted to westerns. It's partly a satire, which is not my thing. Decision At Sundown (1957) offered Scott one of his most emotional characters, and he rises to the challenge well. Westbound (1958) was an average studio assignment delivered to fulfill a contract, but Scott and Boetticher make the most of it. The other four written by Kennedy are lean mean suspense thrillers that play out in the hot dusty desert and high rocks of the Alabama Hills and Lone Pine in eastern California. Here Boetticher gets to hone his minimalist dramatic style and refine his stoicism with classic compositions and pictorial beauty. The scripts averaged 80 pages, which means Boetticher had to shoot 6-7 pages in a day. Hard to believe they achieved such high quality on only $250,000 budgets in 12 shooting days. I could watch The Tall T (1957) and Ride Lonesome (1959) all day, but my favorites are their first and last collaborations, 7 Men From Now (1956) and Comanche Station (1960), both masterpieces of the genre. Although these films were intended to fill the bottom half of a double-feature, the storytelling has not dated and the craftsmanship outclasses the bigger, more expensive and ambitious films they were meant to support, proving there is no substitute for talent and know-how and sticking with what you know.
At repertory screenings audiences are so impressed by these intense and visually beautiful westerns that they don't notice the austerity of the productions and the brevity of the length. In fact, austerity and brevity are among the virtues of these great westerns.
It is still possible to make westerns like them.
Richard
"To live outside the law you must be honest."
Bob Dylan, 1965
I have the box set and I like them all. I got "Westbound" off of Encore and I think it is the weakest of the bunch. When I first saw Karen Steele in that one I thought women's pants were pretty well tailored in 1865.
"7 Men From Now" was sold separately. I like Gail Russell and it's just a tight little story well done. All the films have a good cast of upcoming stars which now makes them even more interesting to watch.
Chris
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
Scott plays a man (naturally) coming back from Mexico to west Texas and gets caught up in the trouble going on in a small town run by a set of brothers.
Scott plays a kind of happy-go-lucky character which is quite different from his other Boetticher/Scott characters. He's going home and he's just stopping off in town on his way. The town is run by two brothers. (They have a third brother but he spends his time playing tattle tale and chief weinie.)
Trouble starts early on when one of the brother's idiot son gets killed by a man for, presumably, raping a woman in the family. He's come from Mexico to get his revenge. Scott, not knowing what has happened jumps in to help the Mexican and they both wind up in jail with an appointment with a hanging.
The rest of the film is taken with payoffs and escapes and greed and brotherly hostility that would make anyone ashamed to be in that family.
This film is different not only in character, as I mentioned, but also in feeling. There is little of the deep tension and a different type of villain than in the other films. There is no wounded past for Scott. There is no pain to protect. There is however, a dedication to his friend and to correcting the wrong done him by the brothers. It would have been too easy to get up and leave but that passes his chance to recover some money and his retribution on those who wronged him.
The two villainous brothers are more pathetically greedy than they are evil. It's obvious early on that they really don't like each other and that carries the plot as much as anything else going on. Money perverts a great many things and here it is justice and a family.
A nice and more humored performance for Scott. Joined for a short time by a young and exhuberant L Q Jones the film has good performances by the three brothers (they look like they really could be) and an odd role by Craig Stevens round out the bad guys. He's supposed to be the strong arm guy but doesn't really come across that way.
It's a straight forward western. No showing off and no deep meanings. This is the kind of western Saturdays at the theater were made for. Enjoy.
Chris
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
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You know I had to add my 2 cents to this one. Actually I wouldn't change a word of the post from Richard - - W except his favorites. I DO agree that Ride Lonesome is one of the best of the whole lot. I too, could watch it all day and never tire of it, both because of Randolph and of Pernell Roberts, who, I believe showed some signs of a real ability to act, but never received another part to challenge him to strive for more worth.
Movieman 1957: It's rare, but I do disagree on Westbound. Actually it was the last I saw of the Boetticher(?)/Scott pairings, and I thought it well worth waiting for. The story is more three dimensional than normal with the three different plots running through it. The young fellow with the one arm, the Scott/Mayo back story, and the main threat to the stage line. This one never stops moving. Something is always going on with very little let-up. The one that interested me was I Assissin (if that was it and not I 7 Assassin), I've never heard of that before and will look it up as soon as I finish this.
I think everyone knows my estimation of Randolph Scott and so far, he has never failed my enjoyment of his legendary ability.
Anne
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As they're offered on TCM or The Wetern Channel (Encore), keep watching and I'll bet you'll end up as a fan like many of us have - - just by watching the movies and comparing them to others of the same time frame.
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Anne
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You gotta like the one where Scott gets drunk and tells the townspeople to go **** themselves! And that's the climax of the story! Is that a Boetticher film? I believe BB was from Evansville, IN. That's about 40 miles from my home in Kentucky. I grew up watching Evansville TV. We don't have a station.
Boetticher was raised in Evansville, IN (my home state, but about 200 miles from the homestead), but was born in...(cue chorus)...Chicago.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
Not yet, I haven't even seen them! I'll preface what I say next by saying that I really want to watch them badly.
However.....
First of all, I'm lazy. Incredibly lazy. And extremely forgetful. I am the absent minded professor of classic film.
Second, I am the type to savor. I save my meatballs for after the spaghetti, if you know what I mean. I am in constant fear of running out of something I like a lot. I cried when I saw my last Laurel and Hardy film, and also when I read my last Jane Austen book. I'll spend a week or sometimes a month in the doldrums when I have come to the end of a mental journey with someone or something that I love. That being the case, I constantly procrastinate when it comes to things like box sets, or completing a viewing of a particular star's works. I don't like to run out. It hurts!
Jacks, we were separated at birth (of course, I've got about 30 years on you, too....) After going to see the last Harry Potter, I was blue for a week, to say nothing of finishing the last book....tears!!! I've enjoyed Downton Abbey so much, and, though a bit down, at least we have next year to look forward to! I just hate to see a really good story end. I wanted To Kill A Mockingbird to just continue on forever.... I have a great old book from "The Modern Library", cost me all of $5.00 at a college bookstore in 1963, the complete works of Jane Austen. I STILL can't finish it...
