Ex-sheriff Ben Stride tracks the seven men who held up a Wells Fargo office and killed his wife. Stride is tormented by the fact that his own failure to keep his job was the cause of his wife’s working in the express office and thus he is partly responsible for her death. Stride encounters a married couple heading west for California and helps them. Along the way they are joined by two n’er-do-wells, Masters and Clete, who know that Stride is after the express-office robbers. They plan to let Stride lead them to the bandits, then make away with the loot themselves. But they aren’t the only ones carrying a secret. —IMDb
A college athlete, Oscar Boetticher Jr. became a matador in Mexico in the mid 1930s. He entered the Hollywood film industry as a technical advisor on the 1941 version of Blood and Sand and then became an assistant director. Boetticher made his directing debut in 1944, and after helming a series of low-budget films, made the semi-autobiographical The Bullfighter and the Lady in 1951. He signed the film as Budd Boetticher, the name he would work under for the rest of his career. Boetticher showed real ability directing actioners and crime films, but his greatest impact was with a series of westerns starring Randolph Scott, most of which were produced by Harry Joe Brown and scripted by future director Burt Kennedy. These films, such as The Tall T and Ride Lonesome, are distinguished by their tight pacing, strong casts, and sly strains of humor. Boetticher spent most of the 1960s trying to raise money for a documentary of Mexican bullfighter Carlos Arruza. Before the shooting was completed… read more
