Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

TheLittleSongbird While the western genre is not my favourite one of all film genres (not sure which one is my favourite due to trying to appreciate them all the same), there is a lot of appreciation for it by me. There are a lot of very good to great films, with the best work of John Ford being notable examples.In the late 50s, starting in 1956 with 'Seven Men from Now' and right up to 1960 with 'Comanche Station', lead actor Randolph Scott collaborated with director Budd Boetticher in seven films. For me, along with 'Seven Men from Now' and 'The Tall T', 'Ride Lonesome' is one of their best and is a very great example of how to do a western, comparing favourably with other films in the genre. On its own merits too, as a film overall, 'Ride Lonesome' is a wonderful film.Complaints are next to none, though for my liking it is too short, another 15-20 minutes could easily have been there, and the opening capture implausible.However, 'Ride Lonesome' is superbly filmed, with exemplary use of CinemaScope, and makes the most of, to full advantage in fact, the vividly desolate scenery/landscapes that are like characters of their own. The music is another example of being rousing but never intrusive. Boetticher's direction is throughout efficient, great sense of style, vivid atmosphere, fine direction of the action and very successful in keeping everything going.The meaty, snappy, terse and fat-free script helps hugely as does the continually lively pace that makes the storytelling continually compelling and taut, with lots of fun and suspense and blistering action. 'Ride Lonesome' is one of the best Scott/Boetticher outings in terms of characterisation, while clichés they are meaty and intriguing ones. The ending is memorable.Scott's charismatic, easy-going yet tense performance was one of his best in an interesting flawed hero role and the supporting cast are more than up to his level. Karen Steele exudes glamour, class and charm, James Best has fun, Pernell Roberts is sardonically humorous and charming and Lee Van Cleef seers and snarls unforgettably even in a small role. James Coburn's feckless film debut is also worth looking out for. All in all, wonderful. 9/10 Bethany Cox

BasicLogic Can you believe traveling across the desert and the wildness, all of these guys were packed light without any logistic stuff. We didn't see the bounty hunter and his group of travelers with packed horse to provide them with anything, food and water didn't seem a big problem at all, nor the chasing group of the murderer's brother showed any worries about their chows and drinking water. When the Indians decided to attack, they just foolishly circling around the shambled wreck with lances, allowing the defending whites shot them like shooting in the fish barrel or in a shooting gallery; I mean WTF?! They decided to attack but just circling around for their white enemy to shoot them down one by one? Ware the Indians really that so stupid? How could it possible the prisoner would get a rifle if he was handcuffed to a wagon wheel? Was it the director's decision to allow such stupid arrangement in order to set up the next scene, he was cheated out by the other guy telling him his rifle got no bullets in it. Another stupid scenario wrote up by the screenplay writer?The guy saved his life and asked for a favor to allow him to bring in the murderer in order to get an amnesty, but the guy simply refused. How selfish and ungrateful a person could be, you tell me. Yes, all the development of this film was simply one-way, one-direction predictable. Old Western films were all alike. They just wanted simple-minded audience to watch them without using their I.Q., basic logic, a least entry level reasoning. Watch too much and too many of these kinds of brainless films, you'd become more and more simple minded.By the way, the repeated soundtrack is so annoying, a typical pain to the hearing as always in the western movies.

jazerbini Among the westerns that Budd Boetticher directed com Randolph Scott, I rank as the top three: Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station and The Tall T, in that order. In fact there are three big films with a curiosity: in all three Boetticher put a beautiful woman between criminals creating for the characters of Scott - in each of the films - a situation of permanent stress, in that there was the need to maintain control over the activities of bandits while needed to protect the woman. And the stories have a certain similarity in the sense that women seek approaching Scott settling since the beginning of the relationship a strong sense of confidence in his character. All three are arguably tasteful films, both in photography, as in the development of action with actors properly scaled. And the filming location: Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, California has a powerful effect on the outcome of each of the films. Among the three I have greater sympathy for "Ride Lonesome", perhaps by the presence of Karen Steele, perhaps for the great interpretation of Pernell Roberts, perhaps the wonderful final scene of the burning tree ... And not enough these three monumental westerns leased in Lone Pine, Boetticher also performed "Seven Men from Now" also with Scott. And in it we Gail Russell, a story a little different from the three mentioned films, but also a great spectacle. Many consider it the best film of the double Boetticher- Scott. Really Boetticher was a master. And these are his three masterpieces.

wes-connors Seasoned bounty hunter Randolph Scott (as Ben Brigade) catches killer James Best (as Billy John) in the old west – but it's a trap. Outlaws in the hills have their weapons aimed at Mr. Scott. Though surrounded, Scott smoothly talks his way out of the situation. On their way to Santa Cruz, the premeditating men pick up perceptive Pernell Roberts (as Sam Boone) and his sidekick James Coburn (as Wid). This was the first feature film role for Mr. Coburn, then primarily a TV actor. While Scott and Mr. Roberts vie for biggest gun in the group, director Budd Boetticher drops a sex bomb into the picture with pointed blonde Karen Steele (as Carrie). The "big guns" contest ends right there. Now, the contest becomes who is the sneakiest...The smart money is on Scott..."Ride Lonesome" is another fine western from director Boetticher and his frequent collaborators, producer Harry Joe Brown and writer Burt Kennedy. For this one, cameraman Charles Lawton Jr. contributes outstanding color photography. A "wide screen" without thousands of extras made several otherwise accomplished directors look momentarily lost in the 1950s, but Boetticher does extraordinarily well, here. For landscape and imagery, this is probably the best of his Randolph Scott pictures. A close second (a least) is "Comanche Station" (1960). Also notable is the fine soundtrack by Heinz Roemheld, even if it does occasionally sound distractingly like somebody is going to start singing "All 'er Nothing'" (from "Oklahoma!").********* Ride Lonesome (2/15/59) Budd Boetticher ~ Randolph Scott, Pernell Roberts, James Best, James Coburn