|
A Tennessee Ernie Ford ballad in the opening credits sets the ball rolling: "For this desert sand / Surely ain't the promised land / And I wouldn't be found here dead." The cowboy (Randolph Scott) is a wanderer trying to set roots, "fiddle-footed" is a friend's term for him, at the onset his beloved (Joan Leslie) is about to get hitched. (Alexander Knox as the land baron she's marrying shades jealousy into privilege, "I never own half of anything... I own it all.") The rapacious business has a fitting name, Skull Ranch, the foreman (Richard Rober) doesn't flinch from having meddlers trampled or shot. About to pepper the henchmen hideout with bullets, the protagonist jumps back into the fray with a shrug. "Well, sitting on my porch night after night was getting dull anyway." The first of André De Toth's Westerns with Scott, several classical themes given a flinty treatment. (The nocturnal corral raid is characteristic of the terse camerawork, a panning view of furtive figures scuttling along the background gives way to Scott emerging in the foreground, framed by slanting wooden beams.) The bride is a hardened ingénue so businesslike about her "bargain" matrimony that she boots Dad out of the wedding, her opposite number is the humble cattlewoman (Ellen Drew) who has a smitten gunslinger (John Russell) to deal with. Alfonso Bedoya handles Gabby Hayes duties, irking Guinn "Big Boy" Williams with his foul coffee. "As a cook, I'll bet you're a whiz at baking adobe bricks." A cabin pulverized in a scuffle, a stampede contained by a covered wagon set ablaze, a climactic sandstorm to blur hero and killer. "Sure got a lot of nervous people in this town." "And you're looking at one right now." With Cameron Mitchell, Clem Bevans, Richard Crane, Frank Sully, and Don Beddoe.
--- Fernando F. Croce |