The Burning Hills

Another of my recent movie viewings was The Burning Hills, yet another of those movies that's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.

The movie starts off with a bang, almost literally, as we see a man tending to his ranch. That man is approached by some other men and shot to death. It turns out that that young man was named Johnny Jordan, who had a kid brother Trace (Tab Hunter) who helped run the ranch. When Trace returns with their ranch hand, he finds his brother dead, and one of the horses with the Jordan brand stolen. Thankfully the ranch hand is smart, and is able to deduce some of the traits of the killers, one having a decided limp and another wearing fancy Mexican spurs.

So Trace heads off to Esperanza to report the murder, only to find out that Esperanza has been turned into a sort of company town run by the big man in the area, Joe Sutton (Ray Teal). There's not much in the way of law enforcement here, and Sutton's men harass anybody they think isn't going to be toeing the Sutton line. A good example of this is given by the way they treat Maria Colton (Natalie Wood), a half-Mexican who owns a sheep ranch outside of town on land that the Suttons want.

The Suttons, you see, have been using the land for their own ranching, even though under the Homestead Act it's going to be doled out to people farming it, and some of those people like the Jordans and Coltons, have already been using the land. The Suttons don't like this, so they've been violently trying to keep everybody else off of "their" land that of course really isn't theirs.

With that in mind, it shouldn't be a surprise that it was some of Sutton's men who killed Johnny Jordan. Trace finds the men and confronts Joe Sutton, who pulls out a gun and tries to kill Trace. Trace gets his gun out faster and shoots Joe, wounding him and bringing in Sutton's men while Trace beats a hasty escape. As Trace is escaping on his horse, Sutton's men shoot from a distance, wounding Trace.

Trace wakes up in an abandoned mine shaft where there's water that flows down the hill. Who should come up that hill but... Maria Colton! Maria finds Trace and tends to him, not knowing at first why he's there. When she finds out why, she's sympathetic, since Sutton's men killed her father. However, she lives with an uncle and kid brother, and they're not as willing to stand up to the Suttons as Maria is. Trace is hoping to get away and make it to the fort to get the Army to send in law enforcement, since this is still a territory and not a state.

Sutton's men come by the Colton place looking for Trace, headed by Sutton's son Jack (Skip Homeier) and ranch foreman Ben (Claude Akins). The two are a bit at odds, with Ben wanting to do things with more of an appearance of legality, and Jack wanting to get Trace come hell or high water, and who cares how it looks. They have a feeling Maria knows more than she's letting on, and when they discover that she does, she's forced to go on the run after Trace, and Jack and his men not far behind.

In many ways there's not all that much new going on in The Burning Hills, but it's still a nice western. Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood are both appealing in this undemanding material. Skip Homeier is suitably nasty, and the supporting actors all do OK. If you're looking to sit down with a bowl of popcorn and be entertained, you'll get that in spades. If you're looking for anything groundbreaking, you won't get that, but there's nothing wrong with wanting entertainment over something groundbreaking.