Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher, 1958)

After watching Decision at Sundown, a movie that seemed to try to explain everything to the audience, it was quite a treat to watch this one, which didn't do a whole lot of explaining of anything, including:

1) why the hero would get himself involved in a fistfight with the local law enforcement on behalf of someone who he had never met (and, by the way, had just committed murder), and

2)how three brothers could be so callous toward each other -- their only concern surrounding the death of one of the brother's sons revolves around money, and they constantly try to sell each other out to try to snag it.

Here's what I wrote about it on criterionforum.org:

This has to be the most underrated of the Boetticher/Scott Westerns, and if I had to venture a guess as to why, I think it's because of the black comedy aspects [an astute poster] mentioned. It's a very different beast compared to the more psychological bent of Seven Men from Now, Ride Lonesome, etc. Here, you have a family that's so irredeemably evil that you just have to laugh -- Boetticher and screenwriter Charles Lang (and/or the uncredited Kennedy) wisely forego any kind of explanation as to why they're so corrupt -- they just are. I know this was a few years before Yojimbo, but I see connections between the two (besides the obvious synergy between Western and samurai) -- the corruption of the entire town that's fueled by greed, the disdain for family members, and again, the black comedy.

I thought the movie was going to get serious once, when Pecos, one of the corrupt deputies, has a last-minute change of heart, and shoots his partner instead of letting Buchanan die. At first, I thought Pecos did that because he didn't want Buchanan to die thinking he had anything to do with his death since they were friendly earlier. But in his post-mortem conversation with his partner, Pecos said he only did it because Buchanan, like Pecos, was from west Texas. Buchanan gives a noticeable eye-roll to that, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation.

And really, the whole movie is absurd, but I mean that in the best possible way -- the movie acknowledges this, especially in the title, since other than the opening scene Buchanan is pretty much always riding with someone and is hardly the taciturn loner of his other Westerns with Boetticher. The only one of the three wretched brothers who's alive at the end of the film is Amos, the big dumb guy who spends most of the film lurching between his hotel, the sheriff's office, and the judge's estate, clutching his heart, which is located barely above his hiked-up overalls. When he's not sure where he's supposed to go next, the camera lingers on him as he stops in the middle of the street and looks around, confused about who he's supposed to be screwing over. The last line of the film is from Carbo, a real bastard who the movie paints as almost a good guy because he was loyal to the judge until the end (come to think of it, that's why Pecos, who actually wasn't a bad guy, got killed -- lack of loyalty to one side). He says to Amos, who's looking at his two dead brothers, "Well, don't just stand there -- get a shovel." It's not a cruel line at all, because Amos (just like his two dead brothers) didn't give a rat's ass about their well-being while they were alive. Sadly, that's what makes it so funny.

I've now seen all the Ranown Westerns, and can't wait for the DVD's, which are allegedly coming from Columbia by the end of this year.