There's a sequence towards the end of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" in which Tim Holt must keep his eye and his gun on the paranoid Humphrey Bogart, who has threatened to jump him whenever he has a chance in order to steal the treasure. It's a tense journey.
"The Ride Back" is a very unusual movie. While William Conrad did appear in various films in the 1940s and 50s, he almost exclusively played bit parts--and mostly heavies (not joke intended).
Extremely BORING (and I mean it) and slow Western, redeemed in the last 10 minutes by a serviceable, nice enough ending. Even the humdrum song sung by the noted actor Eddie Albert delivered a nice touch at the ending.
"The Ride Back" isn't a bad movie. It's just not as good as it should have been.
The Ride Back is directed by Allen H. Miner and written by Antony Ellis.
In this quiet, appealing Western / character study, Anthony Quinn offers a typically charismatic performance. He plays Roberto "Bob" Kallen, a wanted man who is sought out by stubborn sheriff Chris Hamish (William Conrad).
Strictly as a matter of timing, I was struck by the very opening sequence in which a young boy runs across a dusty Western street with a gun going 'bang, bang' at an imaginary outlaw. As I write this, the nation is undergoing a raucous debate over proposed new and stricter gun control laws following the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, and the media is filled with numerous stories of kids as young as five years old getting reprimanded or suspended from school for doing the same thing, sometimes for just pointing a finger to simulate a pistol.
In the Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann tradition this is one of those Westerns from the 1950's that can be cited as apart from the rest. A welcome change from the usual and the tired, endless stream of the eras most popular genre, both at the Movies and on the small screen.
Ahead of its time story relying on psychological impact of stress on a sherrif trying to take a prisoner back for trial. Little shoot-em-up, lots more dialogue.
