This septet of color films is often regarded as a great B-movie series. They may be B in their unpretentiousness and brief running times (not one reaches 80 minutes), but certainly not thematically or visually. The deceptive simplicity of [director Budd] Boetticher’s artistry was ideally matched to [Randolph] Scott’s plain acting. Scott never could have [...]

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Like John Ford and John Wayne on Stagecoach (1939), and Anthony Mann and James Stewart on Winchester ’73 (1950), something rare clicked when Budd Boetticher directed Scott for the first time in Seven Men from Now (1956). With a superior script and a director with gifts for visual expressiveness, dramatic fire, and unvarnished truthtelling, Scott, [...]

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