♬ Randolph Scott ♬
Posted on 02/21/2026 2:12:00 PM PST by Twotone
The real horror of most western movie stories is that the frontier exists in a lawless state that's particularly obscene as it's the leading edge of America moving west – a country founded on an almost divinely inspired Constitution and the expectation that law will create the conditions for democracy as the country fulfills its manifest destiny.
I couldn't help but think of this during one particular scene in Budd Boetticher's 1958 b-western Buchanan Rides Alone – the fifth of six (or seven, depending on what you read) films in the director's Ranown Cycle (including 7 Men From Now, The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station, and possibly Westbound – again, depending on what you read).
There are scenes that come standard issue with nearly every western: the stagecoach chase, the saloon brawl, the hanging – roughly from a convenient tree or formally on a gallows in the town square – and the main street showdown at high noon. One you don't see often is a jury trial, not because there were no judges or juries on the frontier but because they sit uncomfortably amidst all the canonical stereotypes of the lawless west.
Buchanan Rides Alone has been described as the closest thing Boetticher gets to a comedy in the whole Ranown Cycle and if you're familiar with the films you'll see why just moments after the credits roll. Tom Buchanan (Randolph Scott) rides out of the desert and up the main street of Agry, a California border town run by a single family where the border isn't a 20-foot-high wall but a sign on a wooden bridge.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
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Cowboy phrase of the year....Brand’m...don’t Barbecu’m
Best movie ever made
My favorite of the Boetticher adult westerns. Much of it reads like a “Maverick” episode. Roy Huggins would eventually rely on his friendship with Budd to get him to direct the first three “Maverick” episodes in 1957 with James Garner.
Came here to post this. Leaving satisfied.
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