Raw Edge

Set in the days of the Oregon Territory, Raw Edge is one of your more adult westerns made during the Fifties at a time when westerns were trying to compete with westerns shown on television. The Saturday matinée kids of the Thirties and Forties did not see westerns that were about sex.

John Gavin married to Mara Corday insults Yvonne DeCarlo in the eyes of her husband Herbert Rudley who is the local Ponderosa owner in the area. But this guy has a lot more power than Ben Cartwright ever dreamed of. He's a veritable medieval lord of the manor and he's in charge of the women who in pioneer Oregon are the most valuable commodity around.

Gavin is hung as per Lord Rudley's orders and Mara Corday who is a mixed racial women is then 'assigned' to Robert J. Wilkie also per Lord Rudley's orders. That's how it is in his part of Oregon.

That is until former Texas Ranger Rory Calhoun arrives in town and is greeted with his brother's lifeless swinging body. He wants answers and wants them now.

Which presents a peculiar conundrum for a lot of people. They're all under Rudley's thumb, but they also realize that there's still a shortage of women and Yvonne DeCarlo's one most desirable woman. And she'd also be a wealthy widow. And Corday has a tribe of relations ready to take up her cause as well.

All in all Raw Edge with its emphasis on sex and women as valuable commodities is an unusual, but entertaining western. Besides those I've mentioned look for good performances from Rex Reason as a cynical gambler and a father and son pair of lowlifes, Emile Meyer and Neville Brand.

Definitely one adult western.

A little sinister, dark, slow and boring. Not a winning combination for a matinee style western.

This movie is light on for action and plot or even story development. The bad guys are pretty mild and Rory just seems to be going through his paces on this one.

The ending is also a fail.

There are plenty of great westerns out there you can enjoy, sadly this isn't one of them.

From the deep, dark depths of Universal's back catalogue comes Raw Edge, a truly bizarre western. It's really awful.

The movie is set in the 'lawless' 1842 Oregon, where if a woman is widowed, they are up for grabs to whoever 'claims' her first. The land baron who set this rule has a beautiful wife (played by Yvonne DeCarlo) who all the men covet. When she gets assaulted, an innocent man is lynched and his wife is widowed. It's gonna take tough gunslinger Tex Kirby (Rory Calhoun) to avenge his brother and sort out the greatly misogynistic tyrant.

This movie's biggest failing is the story which is pretty ridiculous. The premise is unbelievable, even for the Oregon of the Wild West. The plot itself wasn't particularly engaging either, the revenge story had been done dozens of times before and much better than this. It's also not very exciting and there are barely any fights that were fun to watch.

Rory Calhoun is fine in the movie, he says his lines and does bring a sort of stoic personality to his character. Same goes for Yvonne DeCarlo, she's fine. Neville Brand plays an over the top villain who's out to get DeCarlo, he was entertaining enough.

Overall, this film is really bizarre and barely entertaining enough to warrant a watch. The acting is serviceable but the plot is all kinds of strange. But I think it could be fun for the sheer weirdness of it.

I read the reviews here and wonder if anyone has a different interpretation. This movie is about the dark side of human nature where everyone is for themselves. I'm not sure if that message will catch but it will in another light if you consider more recent films such as the Dark Knight movies or the Man With No Name trilogy. In many movies, there are no real heroes. So even the women in this movie don't have emotional reaction when something tragic happens to a close person. The hero Tex Kirby comes back for revenge of his brother, or is it? Paca who loses her husband finds an cold unexpected way to get revenge. The Indian maids who leave Hannah (Yvonne De Carlo) and the ranch are neutral characters but still, they do what's best in their interest. So at the end, it is easy for Hannah to have no love lost and be willing to leave with the hero.

The wild west was an arena where you had to watch your back. The setting was a wild 1842 Oregon where there are no rules. It was lawless and you defended yourself. Even those you think you can trust, can you really trust them? The rancher who makes the rules, Gerald Montgomery makes very harsh rules. Take a woman like she is property if she has no husband. One evil character shoots his father in the back. No one cries in this movie. Violence, lawlessness and war dull the emotions. We know that where even young children exposed to war get emotionally insensitive to death. It is unusually violent for a movie in the mid-50s depicting rape, murder (of relatives), treachery and lawlessness. It seems really that the Yakima Indians are the only ones with a code, law or ethics.

A question is what degrees of evil and selfishness are there?

If you watch the movie with this in mind, you can see the message. But most people won't see it that way, but will get confused by the mindless violence and unemotional characters. In this way, it's an unusual minor masterpiece.

The evil characters are definitely fun. Overall, supporting roles are well-acted but the leads are very average. The script does not lead to a clearer message and a viewer could get lost in its meaninglessness. Other than the message and supporting actors, the movie is fairly average. So an average rating might be 5-6 for me, but the supporting actors and dark message are fascinating and bump it to a 7 even 7.5. If you don't understand it, it's a 5 or 6.

This is really a shame that director John Sherwood gave us only three films: this one, CREATURE WALKS AMONG US and MONOLITH MONSTERS. This western is very unusual concerning not the cast but the topic. It is very smart of have shown how West was in those times, where there were so few women for so many men. And no one can miss a western starring the flaming Yvonne De Carlo, co starring here Mara Corday and the likes of Neville Brand, Rory Calhoun. Excellent directing, excellent locations, settings, and for a short length, only seventy five minutes. Not a masterpiece but an Universal western to remember.