Classic western. That poster is goofy as hell though!

A brisk 80 minute western whose first 20 minutes or so of typical genre gags suck pretty hard. That it still garners a great score from me is a testament to how focused and substantial the remaining 60 minutes are.

Another fine Boetticher-Scott Western, this time with a terrifying Richard Boone as the baddie.

This felt like the most unremarkable Western I've ever seen. Maybe it's that Randolph Scott isn't bad-ass enough for me; he's just a regular dude.

What I like about these Burt Kennedy/Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott westerns, is that even though they're not too realistic, and even when their premises are a bit corny (in this case for instance), they're still so engaging, feel so fresh, and so exquisitely well-paced. There's just never a dull or predictable moment.

Boetticher doesn't seem capable of anything truly remarkable, yet I can't stop thinking about his movies. It's the essence of the western genre distilled to its purest form. What really makes him stand out is the respect he gives the characters, especially in westerns, where protagonists or villians so frequently get raised to a mythic stature. Even when the plot gets into cliche territory, the characters and situations feel very real.

A tense little western. Considering Boetticher is normally seen as the grim, dark western filmmaker The Tall T starts off a tad cheesy (lame '50s child actors, the main character hiding from the bull in the water trough). Still once it gets going it is riveting stuff, a raw, tough, gripping film that gets in, gets the job done and exits just as quickly as it started. The western at its most genre-ish (or at least that's what I like to think in my own reductive manner) and all the better for it.