La Chevauchée des bannis

This is an excellent western by Andre de Toth. It is mainly remembered for its final thirty minutes,an extraordinary ride in the snow ,where the director makes the best of black and white pictures while he's filming all the tired horses ...Hell freezes over.

But the first hour is absorbing as well with its depiction of an one-horse town lost in the snow,a dead end where one never really knows which ones are prisoners and which ones are guards .The "ball ",during which the four women are really having a bad time (particularly Tina Louise)is one of the most violent scenes ever filmed in a western .And all they are doing is dancing.It has to be seen to be believed! Robert Ryan is ,as always,excellent ,as a tired blasé man who just wants to live in peace.

Outlaws make a stopover at a tiny frontier town, holding the residents hostage. The most notable feature of this western is its frigid, snow-covered setting, effectively conveyed by the stark cinematography. The plot concerning conflicts between ranchers and cowboys and the invasion of the outlaws is not terribly compelling but De Toth keeps it interesting enough. Ryan plays a disgruntled cowboy and, as always, he's worth watching. Louise, who played Ryan's Daughter-in-Law the previous year in her film debut in "God's Little Acre," here plays his love interest! Ives is fine as the leader of the outlaws. The score is nice.

A tough cattleman (Robert Ryan) in bleak Bitters, Wyoming, is willing to use deadly force to stop a rancher (Alan Marshal) who's fencing-in the area, but a band of rogue cavalry men led by Capt. Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) interrupt their quarrel. Tina Louise plays the rancher's wife, Venetia Stevenson a girl in the town and David Nelson a reasonable member of the gang.

"Day of the Outlaw" (1959) is a B&W psychological Western shot in the Oregon Cascades. It's similar to Westerns from the same period by Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, not to mention just as good or better. The protagonist (Ryan) isn't a hero, but rather a tortured man ready to make a last stand; meanwhile Bruhn (Ives) isn't wholly corrupted and still has some sense of nobility. Several of his hardened men, however, have clearly crossed over into the dark side.

Tina Louise, who would play Ginger from Gilligan's Island in 5-6 years, is younger & cuter here while Venetia Stevenson is nimble and winsome. You might remember Venetia from her jaw-dropping role in "The City of the Dead," aka "Horror Hotel" (1960).

Director Andre DeToth was having personal problems at the time of shooting and it affected the mood of the set, plus there were other issues, like snowstorm delays, Ryan missing a week due to pneumonia and DeToth changing his mind about scene locations at the last minute, etc. Perhaps the biggest problem was that the budget was low and, when they ran out of finances, DeToth & crew just packed-up and went back to Los Angeles.

Producers & editors had to make do with what was shot, which explains some weaknesses here and there. Scriptwriter Philip Yordan lamented "what could have been."

The movie runs 1 hour, 32 minutes, and was shot in central Oregon at Dutchman Flat & Todd Lake Meadows about 20 miles east of the town of Bend in late November thru early December, 1958.

GRADE: B+/A-

In the end of the Nineteenth Century, the tough cowboy Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) arrives in the snowing village of Bitters with his foreman Dan (Nehemiah Persoff) with the intention of killing the farmer Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) using the pretext of the barbed wire he is running around his farm. However, Blaise really wants his wife Helen (Tina Louise) with whom he had a love affair. During the showdown between the cowboys and ranchers in the saloon, the violent gang of outlaws led by Captain Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) appears out of the blue interrupting their quarrel. Jack Bruhn, who is a notorious captain of the army responsible for the massacre of a village of Mormons, disarms the men and explains that they have robbed the payment of the army and a cavalry is chasing them. He is wounded and wants to spend the night in the village and he gives his word to the locals that his gunners will not touch the women. Further he orders the barman to hide the booze from his men. When the local veterinary removes the bullet from the chest of Jack Bruhn, he realizes that he might have an internal bleeding and not survive. Blaise decides to lure the criminals and lead them in a journey with no return.

"Day of the Outlaw" is a bleak and original Western in a snowing landscape and based on a historical fact of North America: the violent confrontation between farmers and ranchers that ran barbed wire around their own land and public land that they used for grazing without permission and people that cut the barbed wire. The cinematography is magnificent and the sequences in the snow are impressive, with the horses submitted to a great effort to ride through the mountains. The performances are stunning with Robert Ryan and Burl Ives in the role of strong and tough characters. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Quadrilha Maldita" ("The Damned Gang")

This is an uncommon, stark western starring the versatile Robert Ryan in tough guy mode, as a ruthless cattleman at odds with homesteaders in a tiny, bleak western town. As he is about to settle a feud with a local farmer, Burl Ives and his band of sadistic thugs ride into town and hold the citizens hostage. As Ives tries to keep his men from raping the women, Ryan must find a way to save the town, and redeem himself in the process.

Beautiful outdoor photography and solid acting combine with an unusual story line to make this a very interesting, tense flick. The movie eschews the usual western cliches in favor of maintaining a somber, moral tone. Ives excels as an internally conflicted villain. And Ryan, as always, is the man.