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, by now in his late fifties, excelled as never before. The movie established the Scott persona that dominated the series of seven Boetticher-Scott westerns (1956-60): a loner mourning the loss of a wife and seeking revenge and/or closure. 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 Boetticher’s artistry was ideally matched to Scott’s plain acting. Scott never could have played the psychologically bristling roles that James Stewart mastered in his Anthony Mann westerns, but he’s just right for Boetticher’s private stoics. My favorite picture, and arguably the best, in the series is Comanche Station, the final one and the purest distillation of the Boetticher-Scott style. If it’s a B, then few westerns rate an A.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
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