SYNOPSIS: A macho Cossack immigrant to the U.S. goes West and joins a ring of rustlers. Later his son follows him to states and he too begins stealing cows. Not knowing his father very well, the youth is anxious to prove himself a manly man and a friendly rivalry develops until the father is captured and imprisoned. Meanwhile, his son joins the cavalry and secretly engineers a break out. He succeeds and then feels terrible guilt, for it is his unit that has been assigned to bring his father to justice.Read More »
IMDB wrote: It’s 1876 and all the Indians are at peace except the Comanches lead by Black Cloud. When Black Cloud wipes out a town, only six soldiers are left and they head for the nearest fort. In the desert they are reinforced by members of a stagecoach and find some water at a deserted mission. Pinned down by Black Cloud they send an Indian boy who was Black Cloud’s prisoner on to the fort while they try to bargain with Black Cloud whom they learn is without water. Written by Maurice VanAukenRead More »
In 1870, a gang robs a train and steals a ceremonial Japanese sword meant as a gift for the U.S. President, prompting a manhunt to retrieve it.Read More »
Quote: Ride the High Country is the one Sam Peckinpah movie about which there has never been controversy–save at MGM in 1962, when a new studio regime opted to dump this beautiful, heartbreakingly elegiac Western into the bottom half of a double-bill. Westerns rarely even got reviewed back then, so it’s wellnigh miraculous that critics discovered the movie and raved about it. Newsweek called it the best American picture of the year. Veteran cowboy stars Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea portray aging gunslingers in the twilight of the Old West. McCrea’s character, Steve Judd, signs on to transport a shipment of gold from a remote mining camp. Gil Westrum (Scott), an old crony now trick-shooting in a carnival, agrees to help but really aims to seduce Judd into stealing the treasure. The slow-building tension between longtime friends–one still true to the code he’s lived by, the other having drifted away from it–anticipates the tortuous personal dilemmas played out to the death by Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Benny and Elita in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.Read More »
A wealthy land baron’s sadistic son has taken to abusing the local citizenry with his bullwhip in perverse, evil games. Prospector Franco Nero returns home to help his alcoholic half-brother and finds a maniacal, bullwhip-wielding tyrant controlling the land and Nero’s sibling. Nero joins forces with his kin to try to beat the sadistic creep and his followers.Read More »
Steve Daley is in the Abilene jail waiting to be hanged when Judge Carr brings Cheyenne O’Malley into his cell and says that Daley can go free if he marries the girl without knowing her name. She must have a husband to claim an estate. Daley agrees and gets a letter of pardon from the Judge, who plans to kill him, but Daley, with the help of his friend Podo escapes the jail and the Judge’s hired killer, “Slow” Karp. Daley sets out to find his new bride but is captured and taken to the mansion of John Parnell who tells Daley that Cheyenne is actually a half-breed who runs a fur-trading company and needed a husband because of provisions in her father’s will. Parnell is also a fur-trader but he wants Daley to take over Cheyenne’s business so he and Daley can work together. Daley agrees, trails the wagon train and takes over but not before Cheyenne bull-whips him…Read More »
A number of John Wayne’s early westerns looked alike, but that’s not a criticism because the handful I’ve seen were all entertaining. That’s one similarity: others included the fact they only were about an hour long, had interesting (albeit strange) dialog, had a pretty lead female (here, Mae Madison) and a very talented horse named “Blue.” Of course, the men were all tough guys. There is a lot of action and interesting scenes packed into this one hour. My only complaint was that Luis Alberini’s character made the Mexicans look unnecessarily stupid. From IMDBRead More »
