Ride the High Country

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY             A                    

USA  (94 mi)  1962  ‘Scope  d:  Sam Peckinpah    
Ride the High Country (S. Peckinpah) - Trailer (2:36)

This is one gorgeous looking CinemaScope western, beautifully shot by Lucien Ballard, capturing all the grandeur of the Inyo National Forest in the Eastern Sierra Mountains just west of the California border with Nevada, including Mount Whitney (Full resolution)‎, which at 14,496 feet is the highest peak in the lower 48 states.  In a movie like this, location is everything, as the film is all about a 2-day journey up the mountains, and another trip back down.  Starring two icons of American westerns, Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, both near the end of their legendary careers, where their declining age parallels the waning years of the frontier West, McCrea rides into town for a job transporting gold from the nearby mountains back into town safely delivered to the bank, a job that comes with high risks, as these carriers make easy targets.  Scott, on the other hand, is wearing his wig and Buffalo Bill outfit and working the Western carnival road show circuit as a touted gunman, the Oregon Kid, challenging would-be gunslingers to hit his rigged target.  But once they meet, they’re like two peas in a pod as they’re old friends with a history between them, and their clever dialogue together, written by N.B. Stone Jr, with a few Peckinpah ad libs thrown in, is delightfully comical making their screen time together thoroughly entertaining.   

Scott’s young partner is Ron Starr, an overly rambunctious kid who operates a camel race scam against horses and gets into fights at the drop of a hat.  In the West, it’s not always important to win or lose, just that you get into a fight and give it your best.  That’s all anyone could ask.  The three of them working together form a team, though Scott and the kid have plans of their own to steal the gold, thinking it could be worth as much as a quarter of a million dollars.  McCrea, on the other hand, is a morally righteous man, a former lawman who characteristically serves as the emblematic code of ethics for the West, setting the right example, being honest, morally upright, honorable, loyal to your partners, true to your word and commanding the respect of others.  These are the values being fought over in nearly every western and they’re certainly fought for here.  Along the way up, they stop at a preacher’s farm, where R.G. Armstrong is a puritanical father (cast in a familiar role in other Peckinpah films as well) in raising a lone daughter (Mariette Hartley) alone.  She, however, has never seen anything beyond the borders of her farm, as her father won’t even let her accompany him into town, so her curiosity about spending time with the overly game kid is understandable, as he’s one of the only young men of the opposite sex she’s ever seen.  No sooner are they off the next morning before she joins them, claiming she’s running away to marry Billy Hammond (James Drury) in the mining town where they’re heading.  When the kid makes a move on her the first chance he gets, he gets clobbered by the two older men reminding him of his better judgment.

When they get to the mining town, it’s nothing but tents and a whorehouse that serves women and liquor, where the kid delivers her to her young fiancé, one of four brothers and a father that comprise the Hammond clan, one of whom is Warren Oates, the one with a bird on his shoulder who never takes a bath, where the idea of marriage gets them all stirred up, as their idea of marriage is little more than condoned gang rape, where what belongs to one belongs to them all.  The marriage itself is a crazy scene in the whorehouse where they arrive in procession on horseback, she in the lead wearing her mother’s white wedding dress, with the brothers singing a rousing rendition of “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” When the roll is called up yonder - Twila Paris - YouTube (4:43) or Johnny Cash Johnny Cash - When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder ... (1:37), with the Madame as the Maid of Honor and her hired help are the bridesmaids, married by the town’s drunken mayor, where she has to fend off not only the brothers but all the customers as well, which turns into a madcap scenario until McCrea hears her screams and decides to put an end to the nonsense and return her home to her father.  The clan has other ideas and the frontier spirit is alive and well as there’s several day’s ride ahead to sort all this out.  Scott and McCrea really carry the show, where they supposedly reversed characters at the last minute, but as partners in a long line of memorable partners seen in westerns, their friendship and well-worn characters make each of them feel perfectly comfortable in their roles, where the back and forth banter between them is a special highlight not often seen in westerns, as there’s a compelling, age-weary wisdom that tests the limit of their friendship as well as their understanding of the spirit of the West.  An engaging and highly personal film that is simply spectacular to look at, where these two leads could just as easily be chatting on your living room sofa—they’re that comfortable.