gus-186-777813 I don't think I've ever watched a good cast work harder to make a bad script work. Which means the directing had to be good too. And, for the period, the production values are pretty high too. But the real candidate for lynching was the writer, not the bad guy in the movie.I would have scored it lower but for the laughs I got out of the woefully bad dialog and virtually every cast member's heroic efforts to keep a straight face while delivering their bits. If you're a Gary Cooper fan, or just like to listen to Ruth Roman's sexy husky voice, the rest is worth a watch for just how funnily bad it is. Funnier than many an intentional western parody.

LeonLouisRicci The Bland and Take No Chances Decade of the 1950's Announced itself with Things like this. It was Things like this that Inspired Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher to Reconsider the Western. This Movie is an Elite Effeminate Opposite of the Down and Dirty Wild West with its Dandy Costumes and Villains out of Central "Cliched" Casting from all of those B-Westerns.Just because it has an A-List Production and Gary Cooper in the Lead, don't expect anything Exceptional. In Fact, this is Unexceptional in just about every way. OK, there's the Color, Let's Give it that. But the Script is pure Corn Fritters, with Dialog that can Raise Howls, and Cowpoke Behavior Only Overlooked by the Kiddies.How about the Scene with the Cat? Or Perhaps, the "Exciting", Final Shootout that takes Place, wait for it, in a Living Room. In said Parlor, "Coop" carries on One of those Finale Contrived Conversations as He Belittles the Villain and Counts Down the Number of Bullets."Whadda ya want me to do, count three like in the Movies?"- Canino from "The Big Sleep" (1947).Silly, but Entertaining bit of Nonsense, but if You Like Your Westerns with some True Grit, Look Elsewhere.

Robert J. Maxwell Stylized Hollywood Westerns, full of familiar conventions, seem to have eternal life and this is an avatar. Everything in it seems to have been scraped out of the back of a drawer from 1939, a larger budget applied, and this production its issue.Gary Cooper has played this sort of role dozens of times -- the displaced Southerner, fast on the draw and firm with honor, though kinda easy going whenever possible. He plays Blayde Hollister who travels to Texas looking for the gang who destroyed his cotton plantation. He wears a buckskin-fringed shirt and packs two ivory-handled six shooters. He speaks with a countrified accent -- "A feller could get hurt doin' this." (Cf., "Sergeant York.") The gang is led by sneering Raymond Massey, who buys and sells land, usually by underhanded means whenever possible. The gang includes Steve Cochran, who cannot play a Westerner though he's very good at scum bags in general. The requisite woman is Ruth Roman, daughter of the Mexican plantation owner, who looks and speaks about as Mexican as a Boston brown betty.I don't think I'll bother too much with the plot. No doubt someone has gone into it in some detail and it's not worth much more mention. As in any 1939 Western, it's labyrinthine. Everyone except Cooper and his friends are underhanded and there are multiple double crosses and switched identities and hidden secrets.Everything is retro. The plot, the dialog, the wardrobe, even the music. The score is by Warner's stalwart Max Steiner. He's the guy that scored "King Kong." That was 1932. This movie was released in 1950.Cooper's name, by the way -- "Blayde Hollister" -- prompted me to look through the records of the RACA -- the Real American Cowboy Associaton -- to see if that name cropped up in their archives, which date from the beginning of time to February 4th, 1911, when the last Real Cowboy passed away due to an unfortunate encounter with a deranged peccary. There has never been a Real Cowboy with the name Blayde. Hollister, yes, but not Blayde. As a matter of fact, there is no record of any Real Cowboy named Wade, Luke, Cole, or Matt either. The most popular names for genuine cowboys, in descending order of frequency, were Clarence, Mortimer, Noble, Nebukadnezzar, Plautus, Pinchbeck, and Hortense.If this movie had been released in 1939, it would have been routine. In 1950, it is a calamitous monument in the history of human recycling.

loydmooney-1 Saying it all. Nothing like this western before or since, it being the vehicle for two western standbys, Cooper and John Twist, their near apotheosis. Neither were ever better, funnier, or more ...well Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Twist had many many westerns under his belt by this time, his dialog always outrageous, and Cooper more than once played comedy always to the hilt, about as over the top and with as little concern for anything but taking his shy grin to the near unbearable limit, and line after line of Twist gives every lanky bone in him a chance to strut his stuff...that's right boys, he cut the map of Kansas right through the old buffaloes hairrrrrrrr...or thats for you two love doves, the space of a lifetime, not for me, for me time's running out.......or you were the turpentine, but at least tha settles one thing, they were all in it in Georgia, dogs that ain't eat sheep don't run...... and on and on and on with such outrageous stuff. There was never a writer quite like Twist for the western, his name on anything in Hollywood guaranteed the stretching of the western tongue to heights all his own, and by the late forties and early fifties Cooper had carved out his own indelible persona...and this was their ultimate showcase. As for the plot, forget it, it's entirely lunatic, might have been borrowed from one of the Road pictures...but the lingo....ahhh.... just keep going blue-belly or Ill fry you for breakfast.