The Last Posse

For those of you who like discovering unknown sleeper westerns than The Last Posse is for you. No cowboy heroes in this one just an honest sheriff doing his job and a young man who let's his better side take over rather than live with a lie.

A posse comes in from the hunt with the bodies of the men they were hunting, the man whom these people robbed and a badly wounded Broderick Crawford who is the town sheriff. Some of the town's leading citizens like Will Wright, Warner Anderson, Raymond Greenleaf and Tom Powers are with the posse along with the adopted son of the robbery victim Charles Bickford. It's the son played by John Derek on whom the responsibility for the truth lies.

We hear some of the truth in flashback from the posse members. Bickford owns the local Ponderosa and he's not a benevolent type like Ben Cartwright. In fact he's pushed another rancher James Bell far enough. Bell and sons Guy Wilkerson and Skip Homeier rob him as he's making a deposit of six figures. It's Bickford who pulls a posse together and doesn't want the sheriff along, but Crawford goes anyway.

The desert trip brings out the truth about a lot of things and Derek has to face up to a different version about his past than he's been told. It's not a pretty picture.

The film is in stark black and white and plays for much of the time like a noir thriller. But this B film from Columbia is a real sleeper and not to be missed by either noir or western fans.

The Last Posse is directed by Alfred L. Werker and co-written by Seymour Bennett, Connie Bennett and Kenneth Gamet. It stars Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, John Derek and Wanda Hendrix. Primary location used for the shoot is Lone Pine, Alabama Hills, California, with Burnett Guffey on photography duties. Out of Columbia Pictures, story tells of how a returning posse on the trail of outlaw robbers, return to Roswell, New Mexico, minus their leader and with their accompanying sheriff critically wounded.

Much better than its B movie origins, The Last Posse is strong in characterisations, visually smart and being structured as it is, primarily in flashback, also getting a bit of unusual intrigue tossed into the Oatmeal. It's also very well acted, with Crawford and Bickford making for a nice gruff opposing pair, and the support cast is filled with solid performers like Henry Hull, Warner Anderson and Skip Homeier. Director Werker (He Walked By Night) does a good job of keeping the story nicely paced, dotting the plot with some well staged action along the way, and the finale, thankfully not telegraphed, doesn't disappoint at all. But in the main it's the writing and Guffey's photography that lifts it above average. The various members of the posse are either troubled or driven by motive, making for a good psychological mix, and this in turn is well realised by Guffey's crisp black and white photography of the Lone Pine, Alabama Hills landscapes. The numerous boulders and odd shaped rocks impose on the characters and the desert flats make a grim stage for the unfolding story.

Easily recommended to the Western movie fan. 7/10

Yes folks, this superb little western - posse western, a genre within the genre - is produced by the same man who will work several years later with Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott on the same kind of stuff. Short, small budgets but so great ideas, with nothing really expected, nothing predictable and pulled by strong performances, and the whole without any f...heroes; only terrific characterd=s study. Look for instance Broderick Crawford in one of his best roles, an aging sheriff, his most poignant, terrific ones. And with this western, director Alfred Werker, proves once more - before DEVIL'S CANYON, THREE HOURS TO KILL, CANYON CROSSROADS, AT GUNPOINT, REBEL IN TOWN - that he was nearly at the level of a Budd Boetticher in terms of budget-quality ratio.

The movie's plot-heavy but interesting. A bedraggled posse rides into town after completing their mission. But their story of what happened is hiding something. Still, they're the town's most respectable men, including the wounded sheriff. So what really happened; we know it's not their official story. Later, we learn the truth by flashback, with some surprises.

Producer Harry Joe Brown shows his continuing fascination with the neolithic Alabama Hills by filming the chase and showdown amid the bare rock slabs. It's staging he would later use in his classic Ranown westerns with Randolph Scott. The wobbly sheriff seems like an odd role for an Oscar winner of only a couple years earlier. But then, the tubby, homely Crawford was not exactly movie star material. His role here, however, is a gutsy one for any former Oscar winner. The looks department goes instead to John Derek in a pivotal role that he unfortunately appears bored with. At the same time, the fetching ingénue Hendrix gets a tacked-on role as relief from all the ugly guys. Too bad that great impersonator of ornery young punks, Skip Homeier, doesn't get more screen time.

All in all, there's enough plot and interesting characters to merit a longer runtime. Then too, it's well enough produced to also merit Technicolor instead of b&w. Nonetheless, the movie's a non- formula western, more interesting than most, with lots of compelling scenery, pretty good action-- especially around the rock slabs—and a fine cast. So horse opera fans should enjoy it, despite the sometimes clotted storyline.

This film is not just your ordinary Western mainly because the film starts out with flashbacks from the very beginning to the end. Broderick Crawford, (Sheriff John Frazer) is a burned out sheriff who was well respected and decided to hit the bottle and drift off to retirement. Charles Pickford, (Sampson Drune) plays the role of a cattle baron who is ruthless and cruel and treats other cattlemen poorly and cheats them out of their money when they are facing hard luck and about to lose their ranches. John Derek, (Jed Clayton) is a son to Sampson and thinks the world of his father, however, Sheriff Frazer knows some very dark secrets about Sampson and the two have no use for each other. Wanda Hendrix, (Deborah) is a young gal who is very interested in Jed Clayton and has hopes to settling down with him someday. Sampson Drune is robbed of a Hundred and Five Thousand dollars and a posse is organized and even Sheriff Frazer manages to ride along with them. Charles Pickford gave a great supporting role along with John Derek.