Tall Man Riding is a pretty good B Western, starring Randolph Scott, a mainstay of Westerns throughout the 50's, culminating with the seven films he did with director Budd Boetticher starting in 1956. The screenplay by Joseph Hoffman is tightly structured (from a novel by Norman Fox; one benefit of making Westerns is that they are seldom compared to the original source story or novel) and filmed on location, with "the wind in the trees," by veteran cinematographer Wilfrid Cline, who photographed five films in 1955, including Andre De Toth's Indian Fighter. B veteran Selander's direction is workmanlike and impersonal.
Scott plays a man returning for revenge on the man who (literally) whipped him and broke up his romance with Dorothy Malone (one year away from her extraordinary role in Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind). The other woman, a saloon singer played by Peggie Castle (from Phil Karlson's 99 River Street, 1953), saves Scott's life with her superb shooting and is gunned down by her bad-guy lover John Baragrey. In Westerns what is iconography and what is cliche' depends on how effective it is. In Tall Man Riding there is one particularly impressive shoot-out that takes place entirely in a dark room, with only muzzle flashes visible. Unfortunately there is a "happy" ending that's all-too-common in B films, with Scott ready to ride off alone before changing his mind and going inside with Malone.
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