Usually in these Ranowned westerns Scott really DOES ride alone, but he doesn't here. Yes, he's just passing through town, but after his initial encounter with the hostile residents he's always accompanied by someone else. On the whole it's barely above the routine. Scott could almost have been replaced by Audie Murphy. There is a tense shoot out at the end, but before that we have several gangs of mutually antagonistic thugs running from place to place in Agry Town. Lew is looking for Amos, who is looking for Simon, who is looking for Roy. It's like a merry-go-round with a discordant calliope.
Ordinarily, the Boetticher/Scott movies were as successful as their villains were colorful. (Lee Marvin, sighting down his six-shooter while holding it sideways and saying, "Pow." Pernell Roberts advising his companero who is ogling Karen Steele's bosom, "I said look at her eyes.") In this one there is no amusing heavy but the movie is as good as most of the others because the humor comes as much from Scott himself as from anyone else. I must say I almost enjoy it more when he's the glum, determined spoilsport -- but, okay. "What're we gonna do now, Buchanan?" someone asks him. And he comes up with something like, "Foist we take care of the hawses. Then I -- I don't know!", and he slouches offscreen during a dissolve. Nothing is to be taken too seriously. If for no other reason, we are tipped off to this by Scott's unusual hat. It's not his usual broad-brimmed washed-out coronet, but a blue felt thing with a silly narrow brim that resembles some sort of mutated 1940 fedora.
And it's a good thing he's given funny lines because the heavies aren't funny at all, or remarkable in the slightest way. The Boss Tweed of Agry Town is bland and inoffensive, like a Canadian. His pudgy nondescript face is made for radio. The cheerful, equally corrupt sheriff is a stock part and played without wit. There are one or two of those noble Mexicans who always keep their word. No women except Boss Tweed's housekeeper -- named, not inappropriately, "Nacho." Craig Stevens has the wardrobe and the looks of a good heavy but doesn't have much screen time and is basically a Canadian. L. Q. Jones has an amusing part. He figures in one of those signature Boetticher scenes -- the heavy burying somebody in a scruffy part of the desert. I don't know how Boetticher managed to squeeze so many of them in. Jones has just had a minor disagreement with a dislikable partner and shot him twice. Unable to bury him in the waterlogged sand, he plops the body on the fork of a tree, removes his own hat, and says a few words over the mortal remains. Words like, "Lew, you always was a good guy. But you did have your faults. Like cheatin' at stud. And emptyin' my pockets when I was drunk."
Boetticher was a most unusual guy. He spent much of his career on a kind of Hollywood vision quest searching for enlightenment. At one point he found himself alone and broke in Mexico, scrounging money for a bowl of beans. It's one thing to do that in your teens or 20s. It's a kind of adventure in self-testing then. But to find yourself in that position, as Boetticher did, when you're in your 40s and have no resources to fall back on is an experience that makes for a good deal of nervousness in any normal human being. Boetticher may have been a minor artist, but he was a respectable one.
Ordinarily, the Boetticher/Scott movies were as successful as their villains were colorful. (Lee Marvin, sighting down his six-shooter while holding it sideways and saying, "Pow." Pernell Roberts advising his companero who is ogling Karen Steele's bosom, "I said look at her eyes.") In this one there is no amusing heavy but the movie is as good as most of the others because the humor comes as much from Scott himself as from anyone else. I must say I almost enjoy it more when he's the glum, determined spoilsport -- but, okay. "What're we gonna do now, Buchanan?" someone asks him. And he comes up with something like, "Foist we take care of the hawses. Then I -- I don't know!", and he slouches offscreen during a dissolve. Nothing is to be taken too seriously. If for no other reason, we are tipped off to this by Scott's unusual hat. It's not his usual broad-brimmed washed-out coronet, but a blue felt thing with a silly narrow brim that resembles some sort of mutated 1940 fedora.
And it's a good thing he's given funny lines because the heavies aren't funny at all, or remarkable in the slightest way. The Boss Tweed of Agry Town is bland and inoffensive, like a Canadian. His pudgy nondescript face is made for radio. The cheerful, equally corrupt sheriff is a stock part and played without wit. There are one or two of those noble Mexicans who always keep their word. No women except Boss Tweed's housekeeper -- named, not inappropriately, "Nacho." Craig Stevens has the wardrobe and the looks of a good heavy but doesn't have much screen time and is basically a Canadian. L. Q. Jones has an amusing part. He figures in one of those signature Boetticher scenes -- the heavy burying somebody in a scruffy part of the desert. I don't know how Boetticher managed to squeeze so many of them in. Jones has just had a minor disagreement with a dislikable partner and shot him twice. Unable to bury him in the waterlogged sand, he plops the body on the fork of a tree, removes his own hat, and says a few words over the mortal remains. Words like, "Lew, you always was a good guy. But you did have your faults. Like cheatin' at stud. And emptyin' my pockets when I was drunk."
Boetticher was a most unusual guy. He spent much of his career on a kind of Hollywood vision quest searching for enlightenment. At one point he found himself alone and broke in Mexico, scrounging money for a bowl of beans. It's one thing to do that in your teens or 20s. It's a kind of adventure in self-testing then. But to find yourself in that position, as Boetticher did, when you're in your 40s and have no resources to fall back on is an experience that makes for a good deal of nervousness in any normal human being. Boetticher may have been a minor artist, but he was a respectable one.