Buchanan Rides Alone

There's Aggro In Agry.

Making his way home to Texas, Tom Buchanan stops off at the little town of Agry for rest and refreshments. Quickly finding that the town is run by the family Agry itself, Buchanan falls foul of one of them straight away. His problems are further compounded when he steps in to stop a young Mexican from taking a beating. Something that finds him on the end of a rope with things looking rather grim.

How you fare with Buchanan Rides Alone may depend on how many (if any) Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott collaborations you have seen prior. For this adaptation of Jonas Ward's novel "The Name's Buchanan" is lighter in tone than their other well regarded pieces. Not to decry this as a standalone picture of course, but although it's part of the "Ranown" cycle, it's a long way from the more "Adult Western" richness of The Tall T, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station for example. Conversely the other way is also true, if this is the first one you sample from the duo, and you enjoy it, well you may not take to the deeper themed, harsher other films in their cannon.

Buchanan Rides Alone gets in a does a job without any fuss or boring filler play. Randolph Scott as Buchanan clearly is enjoying adding a bit of comic zip to proceedings, with Boetticher evidently happy to keep things smooth for the one hour and twenty minutes running time. Fine support comes from Barry Kelley, Tol Avery and the irrepressible L.Q. Jones, whilst Lucien Ballard was the obvious and right choice to photograph the Old Tuscon location. Not one to take too seriously, but enough drama to keep one interested, and certainly one that gives notice to what a fine and undervalued performer Randy Scott was. 6.5/10

A rare clunker from the Boetticher/Scott team

A mirthful gunman from West Texas (Randolph Scott) wanders into a border town in SoCal where feuding family members run the town (Barry Kelley, Tol Avery and Peter Whitney) and threaten to string him up for accessory to murder. Craig Stevens, Manuel Rojas and L.Q. Jones are also on hand.

"Buchanan Rides Alone" (1958) is one of five Westerns from 1956-1960 written by Burt Kennedy, directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott. The others are: “7 Men from now,” “The Tall T,” “Ride Lonesome” and “Comanche Station.” Two additional films omit writer Kennedy from the equation: “Decision at Sundown” and “Westbound.” A little cult has formed around these Westerns and most are first-rate despite some not having the biggest budgets.

I’ve seen four of ’em and like them all, except this one. It’s based on the first book of the Buchanan paperback series, started by Jonas Ward (aka William Ard) and continued by other authors after his death. Buchanan in print is a happy-go-lucky wanderer in the Old West with a tongue-and-cheek tone.

The movie starts off entertaining enough with Scott jovial and confident in a decidedly unfriendly Southwestern town, but the second half devolves into tedious writing with absurd back-and-forth storytelling (he’s captured; he escapes; he’s captured; he escapes), not to mention at least one glaring plot hole in a life-or-death situation.

Jennifer Holden is notable as the lone female, but little is done with her presence. This is a one-dimensional dude flick through and through.

It’s not all bad. Like I said, the first half works well enough, there are some amusing scenes/lines, most of the cast is good, the music’s great, and the Arizona locations with saguaro cacti are fine. The bad writing sinks it, however. Kennedy wrote the script based on Ward’s book, but it was lost in translation.

The film runs 1 hour, 19 minutes, and was shot in Old Tucson, Arizona, and wilderness parts nearby.

GRADE: C-