Raw Edge

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.

I know close to nothing about John Sherwood, more often than not assistant director. He did direct RAW EDGE, though not to any memorable extent: its leading male figure, Rory Calhoun, hardly has a longer role than baddie Neville Brand, and the two female leads appear to be there as eye candy more than for any other reason.

As it turns out, RAW EDGE opens with an unusual written panel saying that in Oregon in 1842 a woman could be claimed on sight by any man and she would belong to the first claimer. When I read that, I rubbed my hands in anticipation of watching many fisticuffs over such beauties as de Carlo and Corday.

Alas, the two ladies already have husbands at the film's start, so in no time I rated myself a gullible dope.

Anyway, I did not stop (intrigued by which ogre had assaulted and tried to bed de Carlo) and soon learned of "Indian" Mara Corday losing her hubby, which should prompt a male race for her hand... alas, it did not. She was allowed to run to her Indian tribe, get support from it, and ultimately engineer her revenge.

The fellow I thought would seek revenge at all costs was the brother of Corday's hanged hubby - you guessed it, Rory plays that part, but never with any particular scent for blood and looking nothing short of aloof at times. To boot, he makes quite a few mistakes, allows his gun to fall into baddies' hands, and twice has other bodies stop bullets intended for him. Lucky boy!

By the end, the premise of women with no rights in Oregon is well and truly forgotten, even if Brand and his pa have designs on de Carlo, once her rich husband has been disposed of.

That is when characters start getting their guns out and by that point the action rekindled memories of 10-year-old me and my brother shooting plastic bullets at each other, and claiming that we had been hit in the shoulder, the ear, the foot, and other "safe" body parts and we hadn't croaked yet.

Neville Brand probably steals the show, Rex Reason - what a name! - plays a most affable gambler who dies... hmmm... affably and forgetably enough.

Calhoun looks like he may have wanted to be involved in some other production

Relative shortness (75 min) and lovely landscapes cut some of the viewer's losses. Sadly, those superb vistas are repeatedly partially blocked by superimposed Indian smoke signals on just about every Oregon mountain, though the Indians on the war path threat never really materializes.

The script by Essex and Hill stays within the confines of sheer mediocrity, with unintentional laughable moments, particularly when shootouts result repeatedly in shots in the shoulder, and the victim often manages to survive.

All told, 75 minutes wasted. No rewatch for me! 6/10.

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.

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.

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.