Decision at Sundown **** (1957, Randolph Scott, John Carroll, Karen Steele, Noah Beery Jr) – Classic Movie Review 6441

‘At last the search was over … now he was face-to-face with the killers who had dishonored his wife!’

Director Budd Boetticher’s 1957 Technicolor classic cult Western film Decision at Sundown stars Randolph Scott as grim drifter Bart Allison, who rides into the town of Sundown with his sidekick Sam (Noah Beery Jr), bent on avenging his wife’s death on the town boss Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll).

It is Kimbrough’s wedding day and Allison plans to interrupts it for vengeance as he blames Kimbrough for his wife’s death three years earlier. But it turns out that his wife wasn’t the woman he thought she was. Sheriff Swede Hansen (Andrew Duggan) is in the pay of Kimbrough and tries to stop Allison.

Boetticher directs with pace, style and grit, and the script plays on the Western clichés with surprise twists and bursts of suspense. And Scott is on his best avenging hero form in this dour but excellent Western.

Also notable in the cast are Karen Steele, Valerie French, Noah Beery Jr, James Westerfield, John Litel, Ray Teal, Vaughn Taylor, H M Wynant and Richard Deacon.

Decision at Sundown runs 77 minutes, is a Scott-Brown production, is released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Charles G Lang Jr, based on the 1955 novel by Vernon L. Fluharty, is shot in Technicolor by Burnett Guffey, produced by Harry Joe Brown, scored by Heinz Roemheld and designed by Robert Peterson.

It is shot at Agoura, California.

7 Men from Now (1956) launched Scott and Boetticher into a successful collaboration in a series of low-budget Westerns that totalled seven films, also including The Tall T (1957), Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Westbound (1959), Ride Lonesome (1959) and Comanche Station (1960). The films came to be known as the Ranown Cycle for the production company run by Scott and Harry Joe Brown, which was involved in their production. Burt Kennedy scripted four of them.

Boetticher regarded Decision at Sundown and Westbound as the only mediocre films he made in the Ranown Cycle.

The cast are Randolph Scott as Bart Allison, John Carroll as Tate Kimbrough, Karen Steele as Lucy Summerton, Valerie French as Ruby James, Noah Beery Jr as Sam, John Archer as Dr John Storrow, Andrew Duggan as Sheriff Swede Hansen, James Westerfield as bartender Otis, John Litel as Charles Summerton, Ray Teal as Morley Chase, Vaughn Taylor as barber Mr Baldwin, Richard Deacon as the Reverend Zaron, H M Wynant as Deputy Spanish.

The 2008 DVD box set of five Boetticher-Scott films includes Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Comanche Station, Ride Lonesome, and The Tall T.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6441

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