Pretty much all of the seven Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott westerns are on the dark side but this is, in my opinion, the darkest of the bunch. It is an acute examination of, as the title states, loneliness along with empty vengeance, and in a hard hitting, action packed and psychologically tense hour and thirteen minutes, with nothing even close to a dead spot, the viewer is led through the bleak, harsh landscape of California's Inyo Valley, as seen through Charles Lawton's evocative camera, and the even harsher, bleaker soulscape of ex sheriff and dead man walking Ben Brigade, as seen through Scott's powerful performance. If the Western in the 1950s was not considered such a despised genre by "serious" cinephiles I think Scott would have received a lot more critical acclaim than he got. Also notable are good supporting turns from an array of fine western character actors, like James Best as an oleaginous back shooter, Lee Van Cleef as his even more sociopathic elder brother, Pernell Roberts as a typically ambiguous, Boetticherian good guy/villain and James Coburn, in his film debut, as Roberts' none too bright sidekick. Scenarist Burt Kennedy, as per usual when he teams up with Boetticher, provides fine, wry, terse dialogue that allows all the characters, no matter how scummy, moments of insight. And presiding over the whole, and giving the film its seamless pacing, is director Boetticher. Indeed, his only flaw is the regrettable decision to cast the lovely, curvaceous but wooden Karen Steele in the female lead, although that could have been producer Harry Joe Brown's doing. Give it an A minus.
Review of Ride Lonesome
