A rancher is pressured by his cheating wife and a gang leader, into trying to cripple a marshal's gun hand, after that marshal killed his murderous son in self defense.

He Rides Tall is a cut above many of the westerns released at time with some strong noirish drama at play. It has some good characterisation, quite compelling ones. Sure it's low-budget, and looks like a TV show, but it's well handled by Springsteen and Dan Duryea steals the scene as the villain and he's quite callous in his treatment of a cheating wife by passing her to the Indians. There's a well-staged shootout in a darkened room.

It's a decent western that keeps one watching, however a better lead actor would have made this western better. Tony Young is ok, but overall he lacks personality and looks like he's reading from a cue card. Shame Audie Murphy didn't star in this one. He probably would have if he hadn't made westerns for other studios during this time. In the opinion of producer Gordon Kay he felt if Murphy had stuck with Universal only he would have made westerns with them till '69. But Audie needed money to feed his gambling habit so he made westerns with Columbia/20th century Fox studios.

Tony Young is on his last day as marshal when Carl Reindel comes into town with his father, crippled R. G. Armstrong's herd, argues with the stock buyer, fires Dan Duryea as foreman, and shoots a hand in his back who quits with the intention of telling Armstrong what's going on. Young tries to arrest him, but Reindel decides to shoot it out, and Young puts him down. Then he has to ride out to Armstrong's ranch with a draft for th money and the news that he has killed his foster father's son. His fiancee, Madlyn Rhue, thinks he'll be dead. Instead, Armstrong's young wife, Jo Morrow, makes a play for him. At Duryea's urging, Armstrong has doctor Joel Fluellen cripplle Young's hand, but while everyone thinks he has, Young is as good as ever; he just can't show it because that will get Fluellen in trouble.

Duryea is in prime psychopathic mode here, and with a stronger director, this might have been a fine little western with a nice subtext. However, neither the script nor director R. G. Springsteen seem to make the effort, and it's all about selfish people versus unselfish people, and hang any subtlety. If Young had any qualms, well, he had knocked around, had a short-lived TV oater, and guest appearances. This was his first lead, and so he was probably happy to do the work and get paid. At least the black&white cinematography by Ellis Carter is first-rate.

It's not THAT awful. There were a few points of interest here.

Yeah the protagonist is virtually un-flawed, and he's played woodenly by Jeff Young. But Dan Duryea livens up the proceedings, as a slimy, womanizing, snake-oil salesman of an ex-con ranch foreman.

One of the supporting roles, that of the doctor who is forced to surgically disable the hero's gun hand, is given to a black actor, in a choice that was unusual for the time. The only character that even seems to notice he's black is the hero, and clearly it's supposed to further illustrate what a good guy he is, that he's unprejudiced. Yeah whatever.

Two, count 'em two quasi-rape scenes leave a nasty taste in the mouth. There's very little artistry to either, just ugliness. The Good Girl survives hers unscathed, the Bad Girl's ends with her death. The scene where Duryea hands her over to hostile Indians and stands by without doing a thing for her is chilling; if there was any doubt that his character was going to die by the end of the picture, it goes out the window here. You KNOW he's gonna pay for being that callous.

The climactic shootout scene is filmed at night, in and around a saloon with the lights blown out. This is the most visually interesting part of the film, with complex compositions of light and shadow. Nicely done in a noir-ish way.