Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

weezeralfalfa Most reviews characterize this Louis L'Amour-based film as an average western. However, by me, no picture featuring Virginia Mayo, especially in several low-cut dresses, is going to be blah run of the mill fodder. We don't usually associate Virginia with Westerns, but this is the 5th western I've seen, in which she was the leading lady, and not simply a saloon floosy. She had her tomboy side, exhibited in some of these films, as well as her inherent talent as eye candy. Some years before this film, she costarred with Joel McCrea, as she does here, in the acclaimed "Colorado Territory". Here, as Ellen, along with her small son, she's part of a wagon train supposedly heading for CA. She helps revive saddle tramp Ned Bannon(Joel McCrea) who happened to stick is nose in the wrong place, discovering a small cattle herd, which he later surmised represented the 84 head missing from Hardy Bishop's spread, Bishop being his half brother. Nearly dead of a gunshot wound and thirst, Ellen nursed him back to health on a bed in her small prairie schooner. She later feeds Bannon a cock and bull story about her background as a Civil War widow. Much later, she admits that she never had a husband, and had been a saloon girl floozy, as oily Mexican rustler Zarata claims. Zarata encounters her bathing in the river, and tries to rape her as she dresses. Bannon happens along in the nick of time to break it up. Oily Mort Harper joined the train late but, with his charismatic extrovert personality, soon became the de facto leader of the train, rerouting it southward toward verdant Bishop Valley, Colorado Territory. He talks up the advantages of settling in this valley. In contrast, Bannon tells them this land is all taken and there's no through route westward, but they have deaf ears to that message. Clearly, Harper has some ulterior motive in talking up Bishop Valley. Later, we discover that Harper is in cahoots with the cattle rustlers, headed by oily Zarata. Apparently, their plan is to engineer a land war between Bishop and the wagoneers, hoping they will mostly kill each other off, then the rustlers will kill or intimidate the remainder to leave the valley for them. Clearly , the rustlers are taking a chance that their plan will pan out as hoped. Initially, Bishop hated Bannon, blaming him for the death of his no-good son, executed for his part in Quantrill's raiders. But, gradually, Bishop warms up to Bannon's strategies, realizing that Bannon is trying to diffuse the animosity between him and the settlers in a peaceful way. Eventually, there's a shootout between Bishops men + Bannon vs. the rustlers + some wagoneers. This isn't what the rustlers planned for themselves, and the leaders, along with others are killed. According to standard formula, Bishop and Zarata kill each other, albeit by different methods. Naturally, Bannon and Harper have a final confrontation. Since Bishop left no kin aside from Bannon, presumably, he is now the owner of this valley. He tells the wagoneers (and especially Ellen) that they can stay if they wish, conditions not specified.This film presently is viewable at YouTube.

Robert J. Maxwell Peaceful Joel McRae is riding along minding his own business, stopping to share some water with his horse, when -- BANG -- the horse is killed and -- BANG -- McRae catches a bullet right in the retroperitoneal sac. Stunned, he falls, and sees a blurry image of a man emptying McRae's canteen on the ground. Right away, we know that there are some evildoers around.What follows is an ordinary but inoffensive Western with some unusual twists. McRae's wound heals overnight after he is picked up by a wagon train of honest, God fearing sons of the soil. Their leader, James Dobson, obviously a sneak because he wears the tumultuous mustache of a sneak and looks sneaky, is taking them to Bishop's Valley, prime cattle land owned by McRae's hot-headed, burly half brother, Barry Kelley. There is an ongoing feud between McRae and Kelley.It becomes clear that the wagon train's leader plans to start a range war between Kelley and the aspiring farmers. The goal is to have them kill each other off and take over the lot. Dobson is also in cahoots with the men who shot McRae and his horse, although it's not made clear why they did it.In any case, the plot gets twisted. There are myriad lies and misunderstandings. But a couple of things save the movie from abject mediocrity. Those couple of things include Virginia Mayo's generous bosom, for instance. Her neckline was pretty daring for the period. She was never a bravura actress but she was pretty and was good at tarty roles, as in "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "White Heat." Another redeeming feature is in the casting of traditional "bad guys" as good guys for a change. The brutish Leo Gordon is an island of sanity in the Bishop Ranch's higher echelon. Michael Pate, usually a vile Indian, is a sympathetic ranch hand with some medical talent. Michael Ansara is stuck with the role of the handsome, oily, treacherous Mexican villain, despite his Syrian ancestry. He's fine in the role, as long as he doesn't have to produce any extended utterances.And although I'm not a gun freak it's nice to see that the property department came up with Henry repeating rifles instead of the later Winchesters, this being the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. A minor thing, true, but it reflects at least a little care on someone's part. The fist fights are brutal and the bruises don't disappear from one scene to the next.That there is a final shoot out should come as no surprise, but the ending leaves a few loose ends. (Who gets the ranch?)

Spikeopath The Tall Stranger is directed by Thomas Carr and written for the screen by Christopher Knopf from a story by Louis L'Amour. It stars Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Michael Ansara, George Neise, Whit Bissell, Adam Kennedy, Barry Kelley and Leo Gordon. A CinemaScope/De Luxe color production, film is filmed on location at two ranches in California, Morrison and Russell, with Wilfred M. Cline the cinematographer. Hans J. Salter scores the music. Plot sees McCrea as Ned Bannon, who has a run in with rustlers and left for dead. Luckily he is found in time by a wagon train heading for California. Nursed back to health, Ned becomes suspicious of two outsiders who are leading the group into a dead-end valley owned by his hostile half-brother. Ned must overcome family hostility to try and avert a range war from occurring.Solid mid 50's Oater boosted by the reliable McCrea and some dark shades within the writing. Running at just over 80 minutes, picture condenses enough old time punch ups and shootings into the story to stop the routine nature of the plotting dragging the pace down. There's even some messages in here to show the writers wanted something more than just a yeehaw production. Sadly the film is badly let down by the pan and scan process and the lifeless colour. There are very few reviews of the film about, but nobody makes mention of the bad print of the film? Certainly the current print doing the rounds for British TV is so bad it takes much away from the film. Cline's (The Last Wagon/The Indian Fighter) location photography is barely seen-is this really in CinemaScope?-and periphery characters are heard but chopped in half! Even the normally radiant Mayo looks washed out due to the tired looking De Luxe color. There's a half decent film in the mix, but even with the best of home cinema set ups to play with, it's nigh on impossible to fully immerse one self in the movie. 6/10

lorenellroy Joel McCrae and Virginia Mayo appeared together in the previous decade when directed by the great Raoul Walsh in the seminal Colorado Territory .The movie under review here is not as good -even close to being -as that wonderful picture but it is a sturdy B movie Western that will give genre lovers a lot of pleasure McCrae is Ned Barton , a Union army Civil war veteran who is shot and seriously wounded when stumbling across evidence of cattle rustling .He is nursed back to health by members of a wagon train moving to California.They are making for Bishop's Valley land they aim to cross without permission of its owner ,the authoritarian landowner Bishop (Barry Kelly).When the train's guide Harper (George Neise)encourages them to stay Harper fears a range war is inevitable -he is Bishop's estranged half brother and knows Bishop will not take kindly to this incursion on his land .Harper has an ulterior motive -he is in alliance with a bandit (Michael Ansara) and schemes for the two parties to kill each other and then use the bandit gang to move in.McCrae tries to act as a buffer between the two sides The movie is well shot and decently acted -especially by Leo Gordon is a rare sympathetic role as Bishop's top hand and with sharper direction would have been better .It is still an okay B Western and will please genre lovers