Ride Lonesome (1959) turns out to be a rather good, very compact western, a good undercard for Rio Bravo from that year I'd say. Randolph Scott's as wooden as I remember him but his character, Brigade, has 4 well-drawn, often a little surprising characters around him for most of the picture (if Brigade's lonesome, he's not alone for the most part here). Karen Steele, James Best, Pernell Roberts & James Coburn (in his debut) are all v. good in these good parts and there's some of Rio Bravo's sense of just hanging out with these characters as the plot falls into place. Cinematography is widescreen color and mostly great with a well-set-up, haunting last shot to take things to another level.
Very solid picture with an interestingly eccentric, thematic plot point that the main villain, Lee Van Cleef's Frank, barely comes into focus, indeed Frank himself can barely remember what he did. This choice refocuses our attention on the spectre of revenge as an autonomous, living thing in the heart of the avenger, Brigade. The film also raises partly implicitly the spectre of sexual violence several times, so that behind the film's straightforwardness there's a spookiness about these only-partly-visible, background primal forces of revenge and rape structuring everything we do see. RL will repay at least a couple of viewings for this reason I think.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I recently watched "Cowboy" from 1958 which puts it in this "year range of Westerns"(back when there were a LOT of Westerns , both at the theaters and on TV - and the movie Westerns could be "big budget or B"), and I was thinking of discussing "Cowboy" here -- but, it had a couple of really direct connections to Psycho so I elected to give it an on-topic post.
That said, I have certainly read a lot about Budd Boettcher and his Westerns, many of which starred Randolph Scott.
The "woodeness" you describe in Randolph Scott probably accounts for the fact that his fifties Westerns were never quite A list -- that was the home of John Wayne and still the home of Gary Cooper. But Scott carved his own niche(recall in Blazing Saddles how the cowboys whisper aloud the name "Randolph Scott" in holy reverence.)
The end of the line for Randolph Scott's movie career was his best(arguably, I haven't seen them all), Sam Peckinpah's 1962 early small classic "Ride the High Country," in which Randolph Scott was teamed with Joel McCrea in a movie about "the death of the West" that ends in tears for me(along with some exciting gunplay that is a warm up for The Wild Bunch 7 years later.)
Anyway, it seems that the combination of "Ride the High Country" and the Budd Boetcher movies that preceded it gave Randolph Scott some cult status.
I have read that Scott was offered the lead in the TV series "Have Gun, Will Travel," turned it down and recommended his movie co-star Richard Boone for the role. Boone got the role, and TV history, and very very rich. Thanks, Randy!
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I am a big James Coburn fan -- like Rod Taylor, he was a potentially great star rather wasted in too many minor vehicles, should have been bigger(and he WAS bigger than Rod Taylor.) I need to see Ride Lonesome to see Coburn's debut.
Thanks to "the miracle of streaming"(which finds just about every old TV show and movie), I just saw Coburn in a 1960 TV series called "Tate" -- one of those Westerns not as big as Have Gun..something QT would make fun of(the star was some guy who even I never heard of). But there was as a guest star, young, reedy, deep voiced Coburn just waiting to become a star -- His near silent knife-thrower in The Magnificent Seven(1960) would put him on the map, it took about 6 more years to become a second-tier star. (Also in the "Tate" episode I watched: reliable Vaughn Taylor, of Psycho and of Cowboy. The hardest working man in Hollywood at the time, I guess.)
Here's a thought. Ride Lonesome: directed by Budd Boetcher. Cowboy: directed by Delmer Daves. Rio Bravo: directed by Howard Hawks. Well...its not much of a thought.
Thanks for the links, swanstep, I'll get to looking for them.
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