Budd Boetticher Collection (Tall T / Decision at Sundown / Buchanan Rides Alone / Ride Lonesome / Comanche Station)
by Budd Boetticher
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Actor: Barry Kelley, Craig Stevens, Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Tol AveryDirector: Budd Boetticher
Brand: Unknown
Producer: Budd Boetticher
Producer: Harry Joe Brown
Writer: Burt Kennedy
Writer: Charles Lang
Writer: Elmore Leonard
Writer: Jonas Ward
Writer: Vernon L. Fluharty
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 380 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-11-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of Budd Boetticher Collection (Tall T / Decision at Sundown / Buchanan Rides Alone / Ride Lonesome / Comanche Station)
DVD Review: If you like tough-minded westerns, the craftsmanship of professionals and Randolph Scott, this set is the goods
Summary: 4 Stars
These five movies, directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott, are fine examples of professional craftsmanship. There's plenty of action, some nasty angles and a great lead actor. So what if they were low-budget. They satisfy.
The Tall T:
Brennan (Randolph Scott) and Mrs. Mims (Maureen O'Sullivan) have every right to be scared. They're held captive in the hot, rocky countryside 15 miles outside of Contention. There's Billy Jack, a young kid with a gun who doesn't much like being a virgin. There's Chink, a dead-eyed killer who shot down his father when he was 12. Most of all, there's Frank Usher (Richard Boone), older and wiser than the two he runs with, and more ruthless than them both. He's the kind of man who laughs when a woman burns her hands on a hot coffee pot he could have warned her of. Brennan knows Frank Usher will have Chink and Billy Jack gun them down as soon as Usher has the ransom he demands for Mrs. Mims. Brennan and Mrs. Mims must wait and take their chances. In the meantime, we get to see some of what makes Frank Usher tick and of the kind of man Pat Brennan is.
Decision at Sundown:
This is a drama without, for 50 minutes of the 77-minute running time, any gripping motivation for Bart Allison's (Randolph Scott) hatred. We know something, probably nasty, happened to a woman named Mary and that the slick Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll) had something to do with it. But what? Allison's sick obsession with killing Kimbrough ("For three years I've hunted Kimbrough, but he didn't know it. Before I settle with him I want him to know he's being hunted."), even on Kimbrough's wedding day when Allison arrives at Sundown, seems more like a plot device than a major justification for violence. The movie's not all that bad, but not very good. I'll say this: The conclusion, bitter and drunken, almost makes up for the rest.
Buchanan Rides Alone:
Surprising and surprisingly good. Randolph Scott is not the lone man on horseback who rides into town with a righteous grudge. He's just Tom Buchanan (Randolph Scott), riding up from Mexico where he earned a stake big enough to buy the spread in West Texas he's always wanted. When he crosses the border and enters Agry Town, the county seat of Agry County, California, things are going to turn bad fast. Judge Simon Agry runs the town with a soft, greasy hand. He's pudgy, ambitious, hypocritical, cautious and double dealing. Sheriff Lew Agry is a tough man with a beefy face, a solid gut and a rancid disposition. By the end of the movie, the Agry brothers and their town get what they deserve. And Tom Buchanan heads to west Texas, his gold stake back in his gun belt and a nice, satisfied smile on his face.
Ride Lonesome:
This movie is a fine example of skilled craftsmanship matched with economy of purpose...including the economy of writing, directing, editing and acting. In fact, the only non-economical things about this movie are the over-blown music score and Karen Steele's bosom. It takes only seven minutes to know what we need to know about Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott), the kind of man he is, what he's planning to do with the young murderer he captured, Billy John, and to be impressed as all get out with the hot, dry, boulder-strewn setting. But then the story starts to change. Something else is going on in Ben Brigade's head besides bounty hunting and bringing in Billy John to be hanged in Santa Cruz. And it ain't nice. It's all going to come together at the hangin' tree. Might not be pretty, but it's going to be tense and surprising.
Comanche Station:
A tall man on a horse. A face as leathery as his saddle. A determination to do what needs doing. And fast with a gun when he needs to be. It must be Randolph Scott. Comanche Station is the last movie Scott made with Boetticher. It has a taut, crisp screenplay by their frequent collaborator, Burt Kennedy. If Comanche Station -- well made, small scale but looking big, with plenty of tension between Scott and the bad guy -- isn't quite in the same league as The Tall T and Ride Lonesome, it'll do.
"A lot of money has a way of making a man all greed inside," says smiling gunman Ben Lane (Claude Akins).
"Such as?" says Jefferson Cody (Randolph Scott).
Lane gives a smile. "It can get him to thinking of doing things he might not otherwise do," he says. "You know, it's a long way to Lawrenceburg. It wouldn't surprise me if somebody didn't try to take that woman away from you."
"Like you, for instance?"
"Like me, in particular," says Lane.
The woman is Mrs. Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates), captured by Comanches. Lane is all too happy to tell Mrs. Lowe that her husband, who didn't go out searching for her himself, has posted a $5,000 reward for her. He doesn't mention that includes her alive or just the body. Seems the husband wants closure. As with all the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott movies, the bad guys pay a price. But that's not the end of the story. You may be surprised. I didn't see it coming.
The DVD transfers are fine.
DVD Review: Gritty western movies from a non-politically correct time...
Summary: 4 Stars
Director Oscar "Budd" Boetticher made his mark on the American film scene with his gritty westerns starring Randolph Scott. Boetticher's films didn't make much of an impact at the time, but the critics now say he defined a genre... the rugged, mysterious loner wandering the dreary landscape and looking for... solace? redemption? atonement?
This collection of Boetticher's films contains five full-length films: The Tall T (1957), Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Ride Lonesome (1959), and Comanche Station (1960). You'll recognize some actors who became stars themselves following this exposure. And you'll experience gorgeous scenery, much from the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and the Lone Pine area.
The combination of the "archetypal" western and the decade these films were produced (the 1950s) resulted in films that clearly are not "politically correct" today. Native Americans were the bad guys, and women were to be rescued and ogled.
Boetticher didn't whitewash the living conditions of these cowboys. They were dirty, poorly educated, and without polite social norms. You'll see lots of campfires, with that pot of camp coffee always boiling, and the coffeepot the last thing to be packed.
"B" movies to be sure, but these films are a part of the western fantasy, and our history.
DVD Review: Great movies -- questionable packaging
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm very grateful that these films are now on DVD. My only beef is with the case in which they came -- the info on each of the movies is on a sheet of pager that is loosely glued to the outer case. It fell off within days of my getting the set. It is also written in the smallest font known to humankind. It is odd to me that the company would go to all the trouble of developing this DVD set, with all the extras, and then allow its box to be designed like this.DVD Review: Budd Boetticher Box Set
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are already a fan of Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott, you will love this set. If you are not, you may become one. The cinematography is great, the video quality is excellent and even the packaging is well done. It is the special features and commentaries that make this set perfect. It makes you want to travel back to the time when great entertainment could be made efficiently and on a shoestring budget. I must for any western aficionado.DVD Review: Best Randolph Scott Westerns
Summary: 5 Stars
If you like westerns , these are the best . Randolph Scott is the best version of a laconic hero . All thse films are tightly directed , with very good characterization and excellent scripts . They hold up very well against any of current western films .
Description of Budd Boetticher Collection (Tall T / Decision at Sundown / Buchanan Rides Alone / Ride Lonesome / Comanche Station)
Few hauteur directors are more revered and beloved than Oscar "Budd" Boetticher, Jr., who lived a life more amazing than any movie. And few films have been more eagerly-awaited on DVD than the spare, adult westerns he made at Columbia in the late 1950s, all starring Randolph Scott, most written by future director Burt Kennedy, and co-starring such outstanding actors as James Coburn (in his film debut), Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Pernell Roberts, Lee Van Cleef, and Craig Stevens. Now, at last, you hold them in your hand: The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station. Rounding out the set is Bruce Ricker's acclaimed feature-length documentary, A Man Can do That, executive produced Budd's friend Clint Eastwood. Sony Pictures and The Film Foundation are honored to present one of the absolutely essential collections of this or any year.To anyone interested in the Western genre, classic American cinema, and/or the history and art of film, the DVD release of director Budd Boetticher's five Columbia pictures starring Randolph Scott is a world-class event. For sustained and distinctive achievement in B-movie filmmaking, these movies--often referred to as "the Ranown cycle"--are rivaled only by the horror films Val Lewton produced for RKO in the 1940s. In each case the "B" is strictly a matter of budget and release pattern, not quality. Unlike the Lewtons, however, the Boetticher-Scott films have rarely been properly showcased in America, either individually or as a collective experience--in Martin Scorsese's observation, "one long extended movie" whose echoes, recurrences, and variations accrue extraordinary power and richness. The series properly originated with Seven Men from Now (1956), a movie not included here (but available separately) because it was made for another company. That picture more or less accidentally brought together Scott, Boetticher, and neophyte screenwriter Burt Kennedy--an uncanny blending of talents and qualities to create a great, thoroughly original Western that became the paradigm for the Ranown cycle. All the films run about an hour and a quarter and were shot in 10 days or so. In each, Scott plays a lone-riding man of few words with a personal, indeed private, mission to complete. Details of his backstory are few, and parceled out judiciously so that the understanding of both the audience and the other characters keeps evolving over the literal or figurative journey the film describes. In most cases, there's a key rival or adversary who poses the greatest threat to Scott's mission, yet is also the person closest to Scott in spirit or capability--often a disquietingly sympathetic figure whose necessary showdown with Scott occasions considerable regret. In keeping with Boetticher's own experience in Mexican bullrings, the climactic action takes on the spatial and spiritual overtones of a corrida.
It's scarcely coincidental that the three Ranown titles on a par with Seven Men from Now were likewise written by Burt Kennedy. The Tall T (1957), based on an Elmore Leonard story, centers on a life-or-death situation with Scott and another man's just-married bride (Maureen O'Sullivan) held hostage in the backcountry by three cold-blooded killers. Its fierce air of menace is enhanced by a bracing strain of dark humor, and Richard Boone is brilliant as the outlaw leader, an intelligent man who loathes his brute partners in crime and craves Scott's respect--even as he won't hesitate to kill him. Ride Lonesome (1959), widely regarded as the series peak, maddeningly has been the hardest to get to see, especially in the CinemaScope format Boetticher deploys so fluently. This time Scott is a man bringing a jokey outlaw (James Best) out of the badlands, with the apparent intention of collecting the bounty. Because local Indians are on the warpath, he's soon acquired unwanted traveling companions--a stationmaster's wife (Karen Steele) and two amiable galoots (Pernell Roberts, James Coburn) looking to take Scott's prisoner away from him. And somewhere behind, riding hell-for-leather with his gang, is Best's outlaw brother (Lee Van Cleef). This was Coburn's first film, and upon recognizing the young man's unique talent and appeal, the director wrote new material on location to enlarge his part. Comanche Station (1960) closed out the cycle with its purest, sparest manifestation. Scott rescues a white woman (Nancy Gates) from longtime captivity among Indians and sets out to return her to her husband. Chief rival in this case is Claude Akins, appropriating a few moves of Lee Marvin's from Seven Men from Now. The opening and closing images of Comanche Station define and crown this magnificent body of work. Yes, we've skipped a couple of titles--merely damn good movies rather than masterpieces. Critics habitually pegged Scott as a limited actor (an opinion in which he good-naturedly concurred), but he rises to the offbeat challenge of Decision at Sundown (1957), whose would-be hero gets just about everything wrong, from the nature of his grievance to the impact his quest has on everybody else. Unlike Boetticher's celebrated journey Westerns, this is a town movie, and so is Buchanan Rides Alone (1958). Buchanan, too, is a bit of a departure in being free of guilt or obsession; the happy-go-lucky cuss is merely passing through the border community of Agrytown on his way back from lucrative adventures in Mexico when he falls afoul of the corrupt clan running the place. Boetticher's dry sense of humor informs all these movies, but this one is played close to outright comedy--very black comedy. It's also the only Ranown entry whose cheapness is conspicuous, with tacky sets, crude Pathe Color (with which cameraman Lucien Ballard struggles gamely), and an uncredited score scrapped together from the Columbia music library. But as its criss-crossed motives and multiple betrayals play out, you may find yourself wondering whether this sardonic movie might have inspired Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961).
There's a bonus to the set, a feature-length portrait, A Man Can Do That. Written by film critic-historian Dave Kehr and exec-produced by Clint Eastwood, the documentary includes testimonials from Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Towne, and other directorial admirers, plus the eloquent participation of Boetticher himself a year or so before his death in November 2001. Each of the Kennedy-scripted Ranowns gets a full-length audio commentary (Jeanine Basinger's on The Tall T is a model of historical perspective and stylistic appreciation), and there are pre-film introductions by Eastwood (Comanche Station), Martin Scorsese (The Tall T, Ride Lonesome), and Taylor Hackford--but watch these after seeing the movies, to avoid spoilers. As for the DVDs themselves, these movies have never looked better. Even Buchanan Rides Alone. --Richard T. Jameson
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