Buchanan Rides Alone

I've got a couple of box sets of Randolph Scott westerns; not having done a post on a real western recently and wanting to watch something a bit shorter and older, I decided to put one of the DVDs in the player and watch Buchanan Rides Alone.

Randolph Scott, unsurprisingly, plays Tom Buchanan, a man from west Texas who went down to Mexico to make enough money fighting in one of those revolutions that he'd be able to go back to Texas and get a big enough spread of land to start the ranch which is his real goal in life. Having done so, he's now returning to the US, although the fighting took him a ways west, as he crosses the border in California, in a town run by the Agry family.

The Agrys, who include among their number local judge Simon (Tol Avery), sheriff Lew (Barry Kelley), and innkeeper and town gossip Amos (Peter Whitney), aren't very happy about having strangers here, and try to get Buchanan out of town, at least until they find out he's got all that cash on hand they they can steal from him. In any case, Buchanan is probably planning to spend only one night before getting the hell out of here, getting a room at Amos' hotel and a $10 steak to feed himself.

Unfortunately for him, Simon's belligerent, dipsomaniac son shows up at the inn, looking for a drink and taking Buchanan's bottle of whiskey. This only makes him more belligerent, and he gets into a fight that results in a passing Mexican cowboy, Juan de la Vega (Manuel Rojas) shooting Roy in self-defense and killing him. THis being a corrupt little town, there's no way there's going to be any justice for Roy's killer. Juan is arrested in the killing and Buchanan is held as an accessory.

Thankfully, Buchanan is able to defend himself and be declared not guilty by the jury, although Juan isn't so lucky. The judge, however, is angling for higher office, and eventually comes up with a deal to release Juan to his father back over the Mexican border in exchange for $50,000 which of course the judge will keep. However, he's going to have to keep this secret until the deal can be done, since the townsfolk are braying for blood. Amos overhears the deal and tells the sheriff so they, and not the judge, can get the money.

As for Buchanan, he's been let go, but he's not allowed to leave town alone because the sheriff is a nasty man who doesn't want word of Buchanan's fleecing or the general town corruption to get out. So the sheriff sends two of his deputies to escort Buchanan out of town, with the expectation that what they'll really do is kill Buchanan. One of them is a Texan himself, which Buchanan can use to his advantage. Eventually everybody winds up back in the town of Agry for the finale.

Buchanan Rides Alone is one of several programmer-type westerns that Randolph Scott made together with director Budd Boetticher. If you've seen any of the others, you can presume, quite rightly, that Buchanan Rides Alone is a quality movie, even if it's one of those films that's never going to be remembered as an all-time great. Scott was very comfortable in the western genre, and he's helped out by a more than capable script and a cast of very good supporting actors.

In short, Buchanan Rides Alone is the sort of movie that's perfect for a box set, providing 80 minutes of solid entertainment at a nice price point.