DVR Diary: THE RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND (1960)

Warner Bros. released Budd Boetticher's gangster biopic about a month before the last of Boetticher's westerns with Randolph Scott, Comanche Station, hit theaters. The two films don't immediately look like the work of the same director. The western, more than ever in retrospect, looks like Boetticher's characteristic work, but Legs Diamond gives an impression that the Scott westerns were as exceptional for the director as they were for Scott himself. Diamond has a generic identity that might transcend any personal creative signature. It was one of a cycle of of biopics and fact-based films set in the Prohibition era encouraged by the success of the Untouchables TV series but arguably inspired by pictures predating the TV show like Love Me or Leave Me or Party Girl. With Production Code rules still enforced fairly strictly, these pictures take a strong "Crime Does Not Pay" stance. Their protagonists aren't the charismatic antiheroes of the Pre-Code gangster cycle. They're grotesques, made interesting for late '50s-early '60s audiences by hints of psychological dysfunction. Boetticher's Jack Diamond (Ray Danton) seems pathological, but is more sociopath than psychopath. The damning event of his career is when he condemns his tubercular brother (Warren Oates) to certain death by stopping payments for his medical treatment, not out of hatred or rivalry but solely because he doesn't want his enemies to be able to get at him by threatening those close to him. Diamond's solution is to be close to no one, his self-imposed emotional isolation reinforcing a sense of invincibility acquired after the so-called "Clay Pigeon" survived numerous shootings. Ultimately, like a ghost dancer, he comes to believe that he can't be killed, even as he lies wounded and looks up the barrel of a gun.

Boetticher had dealt with a madman in his contemporary thriller The Killer is Loose, but the type isn't his specialty. His westerns are memorable for their villains who seem little different from Scott's hard-bitten heroes, apart from having made wrong choices. Diamond, conceived by writer Joseph Landon to embody some kind of psychological complexity, seems shallow by comparison to Lee Marvin in 7 Men From Now, Richard Boone in The Tall T or Claude Akins in Comanche Station, and Boetticher never really empathizes with the character. Nor can he do much with so many scenes of Diamond arguing with people and reiterating his personality flaws. The Scott westerns proved Boetticher a master of what might be called chamber action, working best with small casts and limited time frames. A biopic nearly half an hour longer than any of the Scott films diffuses his focus, leaving his style to be identified in isolated but nicely staged set pieces of suspense and violence. Danton is something of a stiff as Diamond but gives writer and director the emotional brutality they wanted. Strangely enough, his most intense moment in my eyes came not when he was shooting anyone but when in mid-argument with his girl he abruptly shoves her across a room. Something Cagneyesque stirred in that shot, some genuine fury, but Rise and Fall, as its title warns you, is too formulaic to run on that fury. It's not exactly terrible and you might even find it a compelling character study as the filmmakers hoped, but as Boetticher's contribution to the gangster genre from the period of his mastery it can't help being a major disappointment.

WESTBOUND (1959)

While making the films with Budd Boetticher for Columbia Pictures that have made his latter-day reputation as a western star, Randolph Scott also made pictures for Warner Bros. For his last Warners picture, the studio hired Boetticher to direct. Neither the producer nor the writers had worked with Scott before, and it's unclear whether the actor had anything like the creative control he enjoyed over his Columbia efforts. The end product still seems like a Randolph Scott movie, if somewhat less like a Boetticher film. The Civil War story lacks the spare clarity of the team's Columbia pictures, but remains grounded in certain story situations typical of later Scott films. Scott and Boetticher may also be responsible for a graver mood that prevails here than in other comparable patriotic Fifties westerns.

Scott plays John Hayes, a Union cavalry officer assigned to securing the Overland Stage route through increasingly hostile territory and assuring that Union troops in the West get paid. The deteriorating situation is made clear to him at a station where the manager insults a maimed veteran (Michael Dante) by putting salt in the young man's slice of pie. Hayes is a man who takes crap from no one and will not let anyone give crap to a brave man who gave up an arm for his country. He forces the station master to eat the pie. The situation sounds absurd but it establishes Hayes's understated power of intimidation.

After dropping Rod, the veteran, off on his farm for a reunion with his hardworking, feisty wife Jeanie (Karen Steele), Hayes discovers that the Overland agent in the next town has quit his job and gone over to the Rebs. Clay Putnam (Andrew Duggan) was an old friend of Hayes' until he won the woman (Virginia Mayo) both men had courted. As Hayes struggles to reestablish an Overland presence in the town, he finds allies in Rod and Jeanie and a dangerous enemy in Mace (Michael Pate), who becomes Putnam's right hand man in the Confederate effort to stop westbound stage traffic.

Good guys (Karen Steele and Michael Dante, above) and bad guys
(Michael Pate and Andrew Duggan, below) in Westbound.

Mace emerges as the real villain of the piece, while Putnam proves the sort of ambivalent antagonist you'd see in the Columbia pictures. With Hayes having reappeared, Putnam clearly feels insecure in his marriage and succumbs to alcoholism. But strangely, precisely because Hayes is his enemy, Putnam refuses to turn a wartime conflict into a personal matter. While Mace advises that the easiest way to resolve the situation is to assassinate Hayes, Putnam refuses to consider that option. He thinks he can drive Hayes from the field by pressuring stage drivers or stealing the Overland's horses. It's as if Putnam wants to prove to everyone that he doesn't fear Hayes as a returned romantic rival, but his choice of strategy enables Mace to commit a series of escalating atrocities for which Putnam is, for all intents and purposes, to blame.

Randolph Scott often plays a loner whose arrival in a community, no matter how righteous his purpose, tends to disrupt the local order. That makes him different from John Wayne, whose influence wherever his characters go is almost entirely positive and uplifting. Scott and Boetticher could play the star's subversive potential for laughs, as in Buchanan Rides Alone, or to more tragic effect in Decision at Sundown. His disruptive potential extends to the domestic sphere. Scott's films often include a female character whom we recognize as a suitable mate for the hero, but is burdened with an unfit husband or fiancee. The man may be unscrupulous or he may merely be weak, but Scott's superiority provokes a domestic crisis that is often resolved by the other man's demise, whether Scott ends up with the girl or not. The final Scott-Boetticher collaboration, Comanche Station, gives a twist to this gimmick as the Scott character and others spend the film questioning the character of a man who wouldn't venture out to rescue his captive wife, only to learn at the end that the loving husband just happened to be blind. Westbound anticipates this device by tying one of Hayes's potential mates, the stalwart Jeanie, to Rod the amputee who takes to heart the townsfolks' labeling of him as "half a man." But Hayes proves a subtle mentor to the troubled Rod, offhandedly showing how a man can use a rifle with one hand without any condescending motivational speeches. Westbound is also unusual in offering the Scott character two potential mates, including the more age-appropriate Norma Putnam, creating some suspense over which woman, if any, Hayes will end up with. But the filmmakers don't stack the deck in Scott's favor. Jeanie loves Rod despite his handicap, and Norma, as we eventually discover, loves Putnam despite his faults.

But because the Scott character has two potential mates, Westbound makes the fates of the two husbands a matter of further suspense. If Hayes deserves to get a girl, then one of the men must be doomed. Boetticher maintains this suspense during a drastic ratcheting up of violence. After Hayes and Rod recover horses stolen by Mace's men, Mace escalates the conflict. Going against Putnam's order, he sets up an ambush to kill Hayes, but Rod ends up walking through the fateful doorway instead. In an unusual approach, Rod is allowed to linger despite a doctor's declaration that his condition is hopeless. This being a movie, you can believe that his condition isn't hopeless, and the longer he lingers, the more you might believe it. Meanwhile, Mace perpetrates his supreme atrocity, wrecking a coach full of women and children and killing them all. Moments after Hayes is hammered with this news, Jeanie informs him that Rod, offscreen, has finally succumbed to his wounds. Now a reckoning between Hayes and Mace, who had humiliated our hero in town earlier in the picture, is unavoidable, but a desperately repentant Putnam becomes a wild card in the scenario. And after the climax of violence comes Hayes's ultimate choice, if the choice is his to make, between a once-lost love and a love yet to be....

See enough Randolph Scott films and the pattern of a "Randolph Scott film" becomes more recognizable. The man and his associates knew, by the 1950s, the sort of stories and situations that worked best for him. Whether Scott and Boetticher gave it a personal touch, or the Warner people tailor-made a story to suit Scott's strengths, Westbound is plainly a Scott vehicle. While the story in simplest terms is something Gary Cooper or any other Hollywood westerner could have performed, I suspect it would have been inferior with any other actor starring. Whether it would have been inferior with some one else directing is another story. While Scott was clearly comfortable with Boetticher by this point, I imagine that the other top Western directors of the decade -- Anthony Mann, Delmer Daves, etc. -- could have done just as well with the actor and the material. I don't have any problem with Boetticher's work here -- the image seems little compromised by the fullscreen "Starz Play" stream available on Netflix, except for the sequence when Mace's horsemen pursue a stagecoach across a too-sweeping expanse of road -- but the film overall plays less to the director's strengths, which I identify with a certain stoic minimalism, than it does to the star's. Boetticher probably should get credit for keeping the film personal as a Scott movie and getting the usual strong performance from the actor. I haven't seen enough of Scott in other hands yet to determine how much of his definitive screen persona is Boetticher's (or Burt Kennedy's) creation, but for now I'm inclined to give the director the benefit of the doubt. As a team, Boetticher and Scott were seven-for-seven. None of their collaborations fail to impress. Individual works by other directors and other stars may have been better films, but Boetticher and Scott were the most successful team in terms of quantity and quality during the greatest decade of Hollywood westerns.

THE KILLER IS LOOSE (1956)

Leon Poole looks like your typical hapless film-noir antihero. A war veteran, he was apparently sort of a foul-up as a soldier, known as "Foggy" to his sergeant, who happens to show up at the bank where Leon works as a teller to embarrass him with wartime tales. What worse can happen? How about a bank robbery? Possibly goaded by Sarge's ribbing, Leon decides to play hero and tries to stop the robbers from leaving the bank. He gets knocked on the head for his trouble, but he wins the old sarge's respect.

One problem: Leon's play at heroism is exactly that: a put-on. As a wiretap reveals, he was the inside man on the job. On that evidence, Det. Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotten) leads his team to the Poole apartment. Tipped off by his accomplice to the tap, Poole is armed and ready, firing through the door to wing Wagner's partner Gillespie (Michael Pate). Sam and uniformed flatfoot Denny (Alan Hale Jr.) burst through the door, Sam hitting the floor and firing at a shape in the dark. The shape was Poole's unarmed wife. Leon himself is stunned, strangely submissive yet calmly indignant as he lays Mrs. Poole out on their bed before his arrest. He maintains the same attitude through his trial, and upon his conviction promises Wagner that he'll settle accounts with him someday.

To this point, Poole (Wendell Corey) hasn't killed jack, except maybe in the war. That changes after he's rewarded for good behavior with a transfer to an honor farm. Riding with a single guard en route to unload a truck, he kills his keeper with a hoe blade and drives off on a road of vengeance that will lead to the Wagner house, where he intends to settle accounts with literal equity by murdering Sam's wife, Lila (Rhonda Fleming)....

Directing Westerns for Randolph Scott, Budd Boetticher frequently spotlighted inadequate husbands whose wives became potential romantic interests by default for Scott. In this black-and-white thriller, his last film before his alliance with Scott, Boetticher makes the loser archetype, who often ends up a victim, the villain of the piece. Given how his wife died, we ought to feel at least a little sympathy for Poole, and under Scott's tutelage Boetticher might have made us do so. Here, however, he's stuck with a three-handed screenplay and a performance by Corey that reduces Poole to a benumbed zombie. Revenge is a matter of passion, no matter what the Klingons say about the ideal serving, but Corey is hopelessly dispassionate. Some may find him chilling, and that was my own initial impression of him, but he gets too much to do and say after his escape -- including a belabored visit to his old sarge's house -- to retain any mystique for long. Boetticher made a classic of thwarted revenge later, directing Scott as the avenger in Decision at Sundown, but once he's loose Corey's killer is little more than a bogeyman, though he does go off on an interesting tangent to stalk Mrs. Wagner in a woman's raincoat and rolled-up pants legs toward the end.

Cotten is solid as the businesslike hero, and there's a feeling of authenticity to the understated procedural dialogue of the cops, but The Killer is Loose is further sabotaged by a by-the-numbers soap-opera subplot driven by the pregnant Lila Wagner's insistence that Sam quit taking risks. She's ready to leave him over his supposedly foolhardy bravery until it finally sinks in that Sam is offering himself as a target to divert Poole from her. That inspires her to some stand-by-her-man foolhardiness of her own as she treks back to the danger zone with the cross-dressing Poole in pursuit. Fleming does her best with the material, and shares a great little scene with Cotten as she whips up an early breakfast while he freshens up after hearing of Poole's escape, but this storyline wouldn't pass muster with Scott, I suspect, and it doesn't pass muster here.

The Killer is Loose looks sharp despite its shortcomings. Boetticher already knows how to set a stage simply for suspenseful action and exploits urban locations as adeptly as western landscapes. Lucien Ballard's cinematography is outstanding throughout. The opening robbery is sharply done, and the raid on Poole's apartment starts strong, only to grind to a halt as the cops let Poole rattle on about the injustice done him. Boetticher overreaches in a scene when the Sarge dares Poole, who's holding his wife hostage, to fight him like a man, but the climax, with the cops struggling to I.D. Lila or Poole and debating whether to open fire on the stalker with the target so close, gives the film a needed closing jolt of intensity. It's minor Boetticher compared to his westerns, but it's still a solid, if flawed B-movie thriller in late noir style.

COMANCHE STATION (1960)

The 1950s were the golden age of the American western. It fell to Europeans to innovate in the genre in the 1960s in response to a drop in U.S. production, which was itself a backlash against a glut of western programming on television. John Ford still had a few westerns in him, and Sam Peckinpah was just getting started, but with the debacle of Cimarron Anthony Mann had made his last western, and Budd Boetticher's 1960 film was his last with Randolph Scott, who himself had a rendezvous with Peckinpah waiting before retirement. Something was changing in American cinema, but on this occasion it was business as usual for Boetticher, Scott, screenwriter Burt Kennedy and producer Harry Joe Brown, which meant closing out what is arguably the best series of "B" westerns ever made.

The "Ranown" films are considered Bs because their budgets were limited and their running times were brief. But the cheapness of Comanche Station only sinks in when you notice how few sets Boetticher uses. On the other hand, he has landscapes that would be the envy of any producer or art director, and if no one told you about the budget you'd say the film looked pretty lavish, since it does. Boetticher complements the landscapes with his most mobile camerawork of the series, racing along to follow hard-riding horsemen and Indians while making judicious use of crane shots to open up our field of vision. This last film is the best looking of the set.

But some corners have been cut. You notice that from the recycling of the theme music from the previous entry, Ride Lonesome. The story itself is a variation on some elements of that film. In Lonesome Scott has to collaborate with some questionable characters to transport an outlaw to where they can collect the bounty on him, and Scott has to worry throughout the picture over whether his colleagues will kill him to claim the bounty for themselves. In Comanche Station Scott, as Cody, makes a dangerous lone venture into Comanche territory to trade for the life of a captured white woman, Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates). It takes his Winchester rifle to seal the deal.

They then fall in with Lane (Claude Akins) and his minions Frank and Dobie, who happened also to be hunting for Mrs. Lowe. They divulge that Mr. Lowe has offered a $5,000 reward for his wife's return -- a fact that Cody hadn't mentioned to her, having given the impression that he acted entirely on his own benevolent initiative. This lowers her regard for her original rescuer, but Lane and company are no prizes, either. In any event, now they must ride together to Lordsburg, avoiding newly hostile Comanches, with Cody concerned that Lane might kill him to claim the reward for himself. Worse, Lane tells his lackeys that Mr. Lowe will pay up if his wife is delivered dead or alive....

What distinguishes Comanche from Lonesome, and elevates it in my opinion, is the degree to which the conflicts in the plot are caused by misunderstandings. Nancy will learn that she has misunderstood Cody's motives, since the hero has a very personal reason for hunting after every kidnapped white woman. Cody's antagonism toward Lane is exacerbated by misunderstandings. He assumes that Lane provoked the Comanches by going scalphunting among them. He assumes that because he testified that Lane had done so when both were in the Army, resulting in Lane's disgrace. It turns out that Cody was wrong about Lane this time, and Kennedy leaves open the possibility that he might have been wrong about Lane in the past. Lane could have a genuinely righteous grievance against Cody to add to his more mercenary motive for possibly killing him. But he's one of Kennedy and Boetticher's honorable villains (though perhaps also the most villainous of them all), risking his neck to save Cody from a Comanche attack, though that may be because he wants the honor of killing Cody himself. Akins is an ideal actor for this sort of part, and individualizes it with his signature call of "Hello!" whenever anyone addresses him. He's like other Boetticher antagonists in at least giving lip service to the idea of settling down to a normal life, while his partners are even more ambivalent about their work, Dobie (Richard Rust) finally turning on Lane rather than join in bushwhacking Cody.

There's a final misunderstanding that gives Comanche Station a poignant little twist. Cody had said that he was unaware of Mr. Lowe offering a reward for his wife's return. Lane confirms that he did, but he uses that fact, and especially the "dead or alive" bit to question both Lowe's manhood (why doesn't he go after his wife himself?) and his love for Mrs. Lowe. You can see that the lonely Cody sees an opening here, but when we finally learn why Mr. Lowe did not go out to the rescue, there's nothing left but for Randolph Scott to resume his lonely ride through the wilderness. His disappearance into the rocks from which he emerged at the start of the picture is a fitting thematic close to the entire series.

Dramatic, often brutal moments from Comanche Station

Comanche Station closes out the Sony Budd Boetticher collection, which was one of last year's top DVD offerings. It includes some audio commentaries and celebrity intros by Clint Eastwood (for this film) Martin Scorsese (for Ride Lonesome) and Taylor Hackford, as well as a feature-length biography of Boetticher that originally appeared on TCM. For the sake of argument, I'll rank the five films in the set, with the understanding that all of them are superior westerns from the genre's peak period.

1. Decision at Sundown
2. The Tall T
3. Comanche Station
4. Buchanan Rides Alone
5. Ride Lonesome

And here's the trailer, uploaded by CultExtras:

RIDE LONESOME (1959)

Lately I've been setting my clock, so to speak, by the ongoing survey over at Goodfella's Movie Blog in which Dave posts his favorite for another year every other day. It's inspired me to look at some films I've had on my shelf for awhile, thinking them essentials, without really watching them. Dave'll hit 1959 this weekend, and that prospect inspired me to go back to my Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott box set to tackle their fifth collaboration. I finally took a look at their first go together, Seven Men From Now, last weekend, and maybe I'll double back and deal with that one at another time. For now I'm going to review the fourth of five films the team released via Columbia Pictures.

This time around, Scott bears the unlikely name of Ben Brigade, which Columbia thought would be a selling point for the film. They emphasized it in the poster and the trailer, and I suppose it conveys that Scott has the strength of a multitude, though not in the same way that Steve Reeves did when he played Hercules. Brigade is a bounty hunter who heads into a typical Boetticher rocky landscape to apprehend Billy John, a wanted killer who has tried to lure our hero into an ambush, but chickens out of it once convinced that Brigade can take him out before dying. Billy tells his partners to summon his brother Frank, who is sure to crush Brigade before Billy can hang.

Along the way, Brigade picks up a woman, Carrie Lane (Karen Steele) and two typically personable Boetticher gunman, Boone (Pernell Roberts) and Whit (James Coburn). Mrs. Lane has most likely lost her husband to the Indians, while Boone sees Billy John as his ticket to a normal life. The reason is that, apart from the bounty on Billy's head, in which Brigade is presumably most interested, the state has promised amnesty to whoever brings in the outlaw. It took a while for Boone to figure out what amnesty meant, but now he wants it, and if the government will forgive all sins upon delivery of Billy, then what would one more death matter -- Brigade's, that is. Boone is one of those up-front sorts who makes his interest clear to Brigade. He has enough of a code of honor to want a fair fight if it has to come to that. For the moment, it's in both men's interest to work together, since there are Indians about and Billy's gang, plus Frank, is on the way.

Karen Steele (above) proves regrettably less formidable than her gun-toting entrance promises, while James Coburn (below) proves more formidable in later films.

Yet Brigade seems to be taking a lot of chances, like riding through open country when there are other routes available. It seems to Boone that Brigade may be inviting a confrontation with the gang, or Frank in particular, which makes his own scheme more dangerous. But he sticks to it, not least because of his growing interest in the newly minted Widow Lane. As for her, the more she understands of Brigade and Boone's conflicting motives, the more she despises both men. Her indignation at their rivalry for bounty seems to steer the film toward Naked Spur territory, but it eventually emerges that bounty is a secondary concern for Brigade, and that Billy is but a means to the end of revenge on Frank at a site of Brigade's choosing, one of dire significance for both men. Partly out of self-interest in Billy's fate, and partly out of respect for Brigade's grievance, Boone commits himself and Whit to stick around for the showdown with Frank's gang, the danger of which can best be illustrated by showing you Frank.

Ride Lonesome is a sort of torch-passing film, though Randolph Scott had a few films left in him, given the presence of future action star Coburn, imminent Bonanza star Roberts, and eventual spaghetti icon Lee Van Cleef. These younger actors aren't all fully formed yet. It seems strange to see Coburn playing the simpleton stooge to Roberts, for instance, while Van Cleef still lacks the essential coolness that he only acquired in Italy from Sergio Leone. He doesn't really have much to do here, given how Frank is built up, and doesn't really come across as the supervillain we might have expected.

Seeing Van Cleef in this picture helps solidify the impression created by the late revenge angle that Ride Lonesome is, arguably, the closest Boetticher and writer Burt Kennedy come to a spaghetti western. Brigade wants to have his showdown with Frank at an old hanging tree where, we learn, Frank had hung Brigade's wife after Brigade, then a sheriff, had put Frank in prison. The difference between a "Ranown" western and a spaghetti western is that, in this movie, we are told what happened to Mrs. Brigade, while a spaghetti western would have shown it. One approach is not automatically preferable to the other, but the difference is significant. That doesn't mean that Ride Lonesome isn't brutal at times. I've noted before that the Boetticher films have moments of violence that sometime exceed what we'd expect from Fifties Hollywood, and here we get the threatened revenge hanging (lynching, really) of Billy John apparently realized.

It looks like Boetticher and Scott never made a really bad western, but in my estimate Ride Lonesome is the weakest of the five I've seen out of the seven they made. At 73 minutes it actually seems a little padded. Boetticher was working in Cinemascope for the first time and may have indulged himself in more landscape shots than were strictly necessary, beautiful though they are. There's also a pointless subplot with Indians who want to trade a horse for Mrs. Lane and get violent when refused. The Indian fight has a perfunctory quality that's unusually disappointing from Boetticher. But the main weakness of this film, as I see it, is Pernell Roberts, who simply lacks the gravitas of such past Scott antagonists as Lee Marvin and Richard Boone. He just doesn't seem like the sort who should be ordering James Coburn around, and his romantic musings over the pneumatic Karen Steele are rather embarrassing. It's a tribute to Kennedy's plotting, if not his dialogue, that you remain interested in the simmering conflict between Roberts and Scott and uncertain of how it'll turn out.

Randolph Scott rides toward the foreground in the rocky opening sequence of Ride Lonesome.

But the general virtues of Scott and Boetticher redeem this film. It is a treat for fans of western landscapes, and Randolph Scott is his good old grim, laconic self. Coburn and Van Cleef are fun to watch while still in relatively raw form, and Steele is easy on the eye. There were better westerns made in 1959, but Ride Lonseome is a decent representative sample of the Hollywood adult western in its peak period.

Here's the trailer, uploaded by CultExtras.

BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE (1958)

The fourth collaboration between star-producer Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher, and the third in Sony's Boetticher box set, is billed as a "change-of-pace, light hearted" film. I suppose that's true, relatively speaking, amid the grim business of the Scott-Brown (or Ranown) series, but "hard-boiled" is the term that came to my mind. Its purported light-heartedness is akin to the tough-minded irreverence toward authority, propriety, and even life and death that we associate with the modern-dress hard-boiled genre. Scott himself is more light-hearted here than the blasted wreck of a man he portrays in Decision at Sundown, the previous film in the series, but most of the comedy here is fairly dark.

This time, Scott is Tom Buchanan, who we meet crossing the border bridge between a Mexican village and Agry Town, California. "He don't look like much" is one townsman's appraisal of the newcomer, who's willing to sell his guns and ammo. He's followed closely into town by some young hothead named Roy, riding hard as if from someone. Roy bumps into a man named Lafe and instantly wants to fight him. "Why don't you grow up?" Lafe protests as Roy storms into a tavern.

Buchanan sets himself up in the Agry Hotel, where Amos Agry is the proprietor. A Simon Agry is running for Senate, while Lew Agry is the sheriff here. After settling in, our hero heads to the tavern for dinner, and finds Roy still running amok. When Roy gets into his personal space, Buchanan slugs him. He then learns that he's hit Roy Agry. "Ain't there anyone in this town who ain't an Agry?" he asks.

Having ordered a bottle, he offers Roy a conciliatory shot, but Roy takes the whole bottle. He needs liquid fuel, apparently, before he settles scores with Buchanan. "Do you know what I'm gonna do?" he asks menacingly. "If you keep pulling on that bottle, I know what you're gonna do," Buchanan answers.

Amos checks out the scene at the tavern, and knows that a liquored-up Roy is bad news. He hustles over to the sheriff's office as fast as his girth and his apparent bad heart will take him to urge Brother Lew to intervene. Lew can't care less, however. Meanwhile, Buchanan enjoys his meal while Roy drains the bottle.

Before any showdown can happen, an angry young Mexican charges across the border, challenges Roy and shoots him. That alerts Sheriff Lew, who runs over with his men to beat the crap out of both the Mexican and Buchanan, who's stuck in the middle of things. Both men are promptly dumped in jail, where custom dictates that the sheriff must wait until they wake up before hanging them.

While Buchanan and the Mexican await their fate, Carbo, a top minion of Judge Simon Agry, goes to his boss's house to let him known that Roy, his son, has been killed. "It was inevitable," the judge says. Carbo advises him to stop Sheriff Lew from hanging the men. Holding a trial instead will bolster Simon's law-&-order credentials. In addition, Carbo has an important bit of intelligence: the Mexican is Juan de la Vega, a son of a rich Don. Doubly inspired, the Judge rides to town to stop the hanging, promising a trial the following morning.

After the jurors turn in their shot glasses ("Judge don't want no more liquored up opinions like we had at the last trial," Waldo the bailiff explains), Buchanan tells the court that he grew up chasing cows ("Which cows?" someone asks) and has since been "a fighter," pretty much a mercenary. Sheriff Lew describes him as "just another hardcase on the dodge" and accuses him of setting Roy up to be shot by Juan. He gets the impression that Buchanan isn't happy with Agry culture.

Lew: So, you don't like this town.
Buchanan: I don't like some of its people.
L: Me included?
B: You especially.
...
L: So, you want to take the law into your own hands?
B: No, just you.

Despite such provocative talk, Buchanan has convinced the judge that he had nothing to do with Roy's death, and is acquitted. Juan cuts his own trial short by declaring, "I killed your son, and I'm glad." He's sentenced to hang, but Buchanan has struck up a friendship with the Mexican, whom he senses to be of good character (he shot Roy, after all). He offers the sheriff a deal: free Juan and Lew can keep all the money he confiscated from Buchanan at the time of his arrest. No deal: Lew is determined to be rid of Buchanan and orders him out of town, escorted by Lafe and Pecos. Meanwhile, Esteban Gomez from Mexico visits the Judge and makes an offer similar to Buchanan's to the Sheriff. Acting on behalf of Don Pedro de la Vega, Gomez offers 30 blooded horses for Juan. The Judge wants $50,000 instead. Amos, who's been arguing with Lew over the division of the Buchanan spoils, overhears the negotiations

Meanwhile, Buchanan fully expects to be killed by his escorts. Luckily, Pecos, the most likable of the Agry minions, "don't cotton to this job." "A man oughtn't do a job he doesn't cotton to," Buchanan suggests.

When the moment comes, Pecos shoots Lafe instead of Buchanan. They give Lafe a sky burial in a tree, carving his name in the trunk as a marker. Pecos explains that he had to save Buchanan as a fellow West Texan. "So long, Lafe, you died real good," he says to his former friend.

Back in Agry Town, Amos lets Lew know he has dirt on the Judge, but wants money before telling. Once he finds out about Simon's scheme, the Sheriff resolves to "spit right in Simon's eye" by getting to the money first. He takes Juan out of jail, intending to deliver him to Don Pedro and collect the ransom. But his men stop at the once-abandoned cabin where Buchanan and Pecos are hiding out. After Pecos stalls them, Buchanan gets the drop on them and frees Juan. Of the Sheriff's goons, Waldo the bailiff had been most rough on Buchanan earlier, so our hero avenges himself by ramming his rifle butt repeatedly onto Waldo's foot to make him talk. Once they know, what's next? "I ain't sure," Buchanan admits.

The good guys leave the Sheriff's men tied up, but none of them ever earned their merit badges. While none of the bad guys can free themselves, they can move close to one another and work on each other's bonds. By the time that Buchanan sends Juan and Pecos across the border, the bad guys are in a position for ambush. They kill Pecos (His last words: "Tell Buchanan...") and recapture Juan.

While this is going on, the townsfolk are impatient for a hanging, but Gomez has delivered the ransom to the Judge, who sends Carbo to free Juan. Juan's not there, of course, but Buchanan soon arrives to get his money back at gunpoint. Before he can make good his escape, Waldo and company return with Juan in tow. They outgun Buchanan, who surrenders and is jailed with Juan again. Amos huffs and hustles to tell Lew that the plan is back in effect, but Lew is looking for Gomez, who is still waiting at the Judge's place, where Amos ends up. Carbo beats the truth out of Amos, and he, the Judge and Gomez rush to the jail to free Juan, despite the public's mounting frustration over the lack of entertainment. Nobody stays in jail for long, however, as we go into a climax of hostage exchanges, fratricide, and a shootout over a bag of money on the border. The story ends with Carbo, who seemed smarter than all the brothers, taking charge of things in Agry Town

Carbo: Like you say, this is my town now.
Buchanan: Mr. Carbo, you can have it.
Carbo: Don't just stand there, Amos. Get a shovel!

Buchanan Rides Alone approaches the farcical with all the switches of poor Juan in and out of prison like the pea in a shell game. The film's "light-heartedness" really consists in its refusal to moralize about the sordid events it portrays. Scott's character is only the least vicious, least money-grubbing (except maybe for Pecos) of the characters. If you've forgiven my pun above, let me say that source novelist Jonas Ward probably meant the "Agry" name to be some kind of mockery of the agricultural virtues of the yeoman farmer types who are more often the heroes of western stories. The actors who play the brothers aren't familiar to me, but they're a convincing family group of stocky, money-grubbing creatures. Craig Stevens, on the verge of becoming Peter Gunn, makes the most of the underwritten role of Carbo, suggesting someone who knows he's smarter than his bosses and maybe meant for better things. As Pecos, the still-young L.Q. Jones makes a charming impression in the most genuinely light-hearted role in the picture.

Randolph Scott is once again effortlessly convincing as an authentic personality rather than an archetype. For all that the advertising emphasized the star's bigness and tallness, he portrays Buchanan as quite an ordinary person rather than a cowboy superman. Buchanan is a different character from the wily survivor of The Tall T and the hysterical avenger of Decision at Sundown, and the more I see of the Boetticher films the more impressed I am by Scott's versatility within the generic confines of the Western. As for Boetticher, I hope my screen captures give some hint of his pictorial skills. While skies sometimes looked grainy on my monitor, this is otherwise a lovely outdoor film to look at. Boetticher and scripter Charles Lang maintain a careful balance of comedy and often brutal drama, becoming all business when they need to but always capable of injecting hard-boiled humor into any situation. Like the other Scott-Browns, this is done in under 80 minutes without making you fell short-changed. I don't know if Scott, Boetticher and Harry Joe Brown felt constrained by their B-picture mandate, but they seemed consistently capable of telling a story effectively without sacrificing deeper effects. They really don't make them this way anymore, and that's a shame. Here's the trailer.

DECISION AT SUNDOWN (1957)

It's Tate Kimbrough's wedding day in the little town of Sundown, and he's treating the town to drinks. People are coming in from all over for the event, but not all are well-wishers. Dr. John Storrow ("Doc") isn't fond of the groom, nor is Morley Chase the rancher. Nor is Ruby the town trollop happy to see Tate marry Lucy Summerton; she considers herself his girl, but he urges her not to sit in the front pew at the wedding. Finally the bride is walked down the aisle, and Rev. Zaron makes the customary call for anyone who might object to the wedding.

Bart Allison objects. He's been lurking around town all day with his sidekick Sam, badmouthing Tate and telling anyone who'll listen that Lucy's "making a big mistake" marrying the man. He's made an enemy out of sheriff Swede Hansen by refusing to drink Tate's health. Now he confronts Tate. "We never laid eyes on each other before today," he says, "and we're not strangers....Remember Sabine Pass?" Tate claims not to, but Bart calls him out, warning Lucy that "If you marry this man you'll be a widow before sundown" and paying Zaron in advance for Tate's funeral. He and Sam exit just ahead of an impromptu posse.

The remainder of Decision at Sundown shifts from Bart and Sam holed up in a stable and Tate's situation deteriorating outside. This is the third collaboration between actor-producer Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher, and the second included in Sony's "Collector's Choice" box set. Scott and Boetticher (and co-producer Harry Joe Brown) made B-level "adult" or "psychological" westerns in the mode of Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart. Many critics now consider Scott and Boetticher the peers of the more prestigious team, and this movie is strong evidence for that argument. Here's how Columbia Pictures tried to sell it to western fans at the time of its original release.





Well, if "a new kind of hero" means hardly a hero at all, Bart Allison definitely qualifies. He's certainly on the "vengeance trail," but Scott, Boetticher, and writer Charles Lang are on a subversive mission of their own to challenge the legitimacy of Allison's agenda. They don't show their hand immediately. We're inclined to take people's word for it that Tate Kimbrough is a villain who has, in Doc's opinion, destroyed Sundown. How he's done it is unclear, but we're probably supposed to presume that he's a gambler or pimp. Our instinct as moviegoers is to root for Bart to take Tate down. But under siege, Sam (Noah Beery Jr.) begins to question Bart's vendetta. Worse, he only now seems to understand that his friend has pursued Kimbrough for three years for no better reason than that Kimbrough seduced Bart's wife, Mary. When Lucy Summerton, trying to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff, suggests that Bart's grievance doesn't justify killing anyone, Bart harshly throws her out of the stable, making Sam more incredulous. When he suggests that Lucy has a point, then tells Bart that "Mary wasn't the girl you thought she was," Allison hauls off and decks him. We assume from what Sam tells Doc later that Mary was a tramp who finally killed herself "on account of the way she was, there was nothing else she could do," -- but Allison can't accept this. He's become fanatical about revenge in a way that goes deeper and darker than Stewart's vendetta against his brother in Mann's Winchester 73. When Swede's men kill Sam, Bart is beside himself with rage. Randolph Scott is one of the typical laconic western stars of his era, but here he works himself up to the closest he could probably get to hysteria. He's less righteous than self-righteous when he kills Swede to avenge Sam. Meanwhile, we're still waiting for the ultimate payoff: the showdown between Bart and Tate.

To this point, Tate Kimbrough has been the schemer and manipulator, sending others out to deal with Allison by any means necessary. For the final act, we get the moment that appears to be characteristic of the Scott-Boetticher films, in which the villain is humanized. He has every opportunity to flee Sundown and leave Allison to his fate. Ruby's urging him to flee with her, but Tate decides that survival means more than merely staying alive. Admitting that he's scared, and needing liquid courage to fortify himself, he decides to end the crisis by calling Allison out, even while enemies like Doc and Morley taunt him and tell him he's finished no matter what happens. Fairly or not, he compares favorably with Swede, whom everyone (including Tate) had called a coward for his reluctance to storm the stable or do anything without overwhelming force on his side. Now the viewer is ready to concede that Tate is capable of honor as he goes out alone to face someone who has increasingly appeared like a maniac.

Boetticher's team has set us up for a scene that's a climax and an anticlimax at the same time, in which the denial of expectations can prove perhaps more devastating than anything we expected. In genre terms, good has won, the town is redeemed, but Bart Allison isn't. Here, at least, I think Scott and Boetticher surpass Stewart and Mann. The latter pair usually had their hero back away from the abyss and find hope or redemption with some woman. But in Decision at Sundown Scott's character is denied satisfaction or closure, and while he doesn't do the worst he could, he leaves the town that now celebrates him a ruined man, with Doc concluding, "There's nothing anyone can do for him."

Decision at Sundown looks like it had a lower budget than the previous film, The Tall T. Except for an opening sequence on the road to Sundown, it all goes down on a standard western town set, or inside the stable where Bart and Sam are besieged. While it lacks the dramatic landscapes of The Tall T, this film shows off Boetticher's forceful efficiency as a visual storyteller and Lang's ability to suggest rounded, complex characters with quick strokes. It's all done in 78 minutes and doesn't need to be any longer. The screenplay has a whiff of misogyny to it, or else it leaves you wondering whether it would have been okay for Bart to kill Tate if Mary hadn't been a tramp, but that only slightly mars the overall effect. Randolph Scott gives what for him must have been a very brave performance, and as both actor and producer he reminds me of Clint Eastwood in his willingness to subvert genre expectations and his own heroic image. The supporting cast has few familiar names (though Richard "Mel Cooley" Deacon is unsettling to look at as the alcoholic minister in the middle of a personal meltdown), but all acquit themselves well. The DVD looks good except for the grainy titles, and features an introduction to the film by Taylor Hackford. For me, so far, the box set is two for two with three to go.

THE TALL T (1957)

Randolph Scott is the man whose whereabouts the Statler Bros are always asking about. His is the name that can reduce the population of Rock Ridge to a scene-stopping chorus of awe. So I assumed for a long time that he was just a hokey cowboy hero. Then I saw Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country, Scott's final film, and I began reading about Scott's teaming with director Budd Boetticher. They made seven films together, and growing ranks of fans seem to rate them on a level with the '50s westerns of Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart. That's a big claim.

Hollywood's '50s westerns should get more credit than they do. They may be mistaken for '50s TV westerns in some minds, or the lot are lumped together in unfavorable contrast with the Italian westerns of the '60s and '70s, but I think both genres benefit from the comparison. The spaghettis have their virtues, and the best from '50s Hollywood simply have a different set. The output of Columbia Pictures in particular is pretty formidable, from Mann & Stewart's Man From Laramie and Rudolph Mate's The Violent Men through Delmer Daves' 3:10 to Yuma and Cowboy, through Robert Rossen's quasi-Western They Came to Cordura. Columbia released five of Boetticher's seven Scott films, starting with The Tall T. That fact may clinch the studio's status of Western champ for the decade.

Like 3:10 to Yuma, The Tall T is taken from an Elmore Leonard story, but Martin Scorsese suggests in his intro to the DVD that Burt Kennedy's screenplay isn't very faithful, or at least not pleasing to Leonard. The movie, at least, deals with Pat Brennan (Scott), who's come to the town of Contention (which also figures in 3:10) to buy a bull. We first see him stopping at a switch station where he visits with Hank the stationmaster and promises to bring back some cherry striped candy for Hank's son. In town, he checks in on stage driver Rintoon (Arthur Hunnicutt) and meets his passengers, Willard Mims and his new wife, the daughter of a copper baron. Brennan loses his horse in an attempt to win a bull on a bet and has to walk home. He hitches a ride on Rintoon's stage over Mims' objection and returns to Hank's station to find it seemingly deserted.

The station has been taken over by a three-man gang: Frank (Richard Boone), Billy Jack (played by Skip Homeier, and no relation to the stink-footed '70s hero), and the outrageously named Chink (a baby-faced Henry Silva). They were expecting a mail stage to rob, but Rintoon has come through ahead of schedule as Mims' private driver. This gang won't take disappointment well, but Mims intends to save himself by suggesting that Frank hold his new wife for ransom, which he'll solicit from the old man.

The bulk of the picture deals with Frank, Chink, Brennan, and Mrs. Mims waiting for Mims and Billy Jack to return. This is where the film gets really interesting. We get an instance of what I understand to be a recurring theme of the "Ranown" films, with Brennan and Frank emerging as almost mirror images of one another. Frank wants to settle down on a piece of land like Brennan has, but sees crime as the only way to achieve his goal. He doesn't see or comport himself as a villain, but as someone who does what he has to, as he imagines everyone else does. He adheres to his own code of honor, which emerges in his treatment of Mims and his chastisement of Mrs. Mims for protesting it. When Brennan questions his claim to moral superiority over Mims, Frank protests: "If you don't understand the difference, I can't explain it to you." As it develops, he's too honorable for his own good, while Brennan, our hero, proves as ruthless as survival requires. Both men have eyes on Mrs. Mims, but while Frank seems only to tentatively offer her some food, Brennan later forces himself upon her (within a certain limit) while exhorting her to stand up for herself. Later still, Brennan sows distrust among the gang, but Frank proves more loyal to his men -- to his eventual ruin -- then Brennan would have the boys believe.

The Tall T impressed me with its brevity. It's done in 77 minutes, a running time comparable to the early Universal horror classics, and as with them, you don't feel shorted. Even when, at my first glance, the picture seemed to take its time really getting started through the comedic business in town, it still managed effective character development amid the natural beauty of the location. It does quite well without the gratuitous picturesqueness or iconic posing that bloats many modern films (influenced in part, alas, by spaghetti westerns). It benefits most from dialogue designed for meaningful underplaying from Scott, Boone and even Silva in what could have been more of a showboat role. Theirs are the sort of performances that sometimes get dismissed as non-acting because they lack the emotive histrionics that earn Oscars, but what they achieve at their best is an illusion of authenticity that fits the film perfectly. Only Arthur Hunnicutt really sticks out in the hammy role of an old coot, but we're not burdened with him for long.

Two standout visual moments for me are Brennan's fight with Billy Jack and a tense showdown with Chink. The former comes to a shocking shotgun climax with more blood then you might expect from a '50s film. The latter is wonderfully timed as Brennan gives Mrs. Mims a loaded gun to fire repeatedly at Chink's location while he takes another position. Boetticher intercuts perfectly from Doretta firing to Brennan and Chink successively counting down the shots, ratcheting the tension toward the moment when Chink will break out from cover.

This is the first film in Sony's new box set of the Columbia Ranowns. I watched it on my modest HP monitor and it looked good except for the credits, which seemed to have a layer of irremovable (?) grit on them. The next time I watch, I have the option of hearing historian Jeanine Basinger comment on the film. This first disc also includes a documentary about Boetticher that first appeared on TCM, along with the Scorsese intro. There's also a trailer that looks as run over as the opening credits, and the usual Sony promos. I'll keep you posted as I work through the remaining films in the set, but The Tall T is a good start for anyone discovering Boetticher and Scott.