Along the Southern U.S. border is the town of Agry. It’s a town in love with its own name: The Agry Palace Saloon, Agry Jail, Agry Hotel. The man who runs the hotel is Amos Agry (Peter Whitney). The man who keeps the peace in Agry is Lew Agry (Barry Kelley). The man who maintains democracy in Agry is Judge Simon Agry (Tol Avery). “Is there anyone in this town not named Agry?” Tom Buchanan asks.

Buchanan (Randolph Scott) knows the answer before he asks the question. Lucky for him, the Agrys don’t necessarily get along. Lew has a trigger finger and a well-used hanging rope. Simon lives high on the hog with an enforcer clad in black nearby (Robert Anderson). And Roy Agry (William Leslie), the drunken miscreant of the family, went and did something foolish, dragging Juan de la Vega (Manuel Rojas) and Buchanan into the mix.

Buchanan Rides Alone is not like the other Scott westerns directed by Budd Boetticher. Whereas The Tall T, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station all take place inside as many sets as you can count on one hand, Buchanan Rides Alone is set primarily inside the border town of Agry, with a small diversion that ends up inside another house. It’s interesting to see these characters confined by spaces, especially Scott, who has to duck under the low-slung beams when he enters the saloon or the jail cell. It’s not enough that the structures confine the characters; whoever built them didn’t even make them tall enough to begin with.

I ain’t got more stomach for this than you do. We got a job to do.

Thanks to its confined setting and series of double-crosses, Buchanan Rides Alone feels like the most noir of the Boetticher/Scott westerns. Officially known as the Ranown Cycle, a production partnership between actor Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown, Boetticher and screenwriter Charles Lang—with help from Burt Kennedy—mine western tropes for all their worth and get a lot of miles out of them. This is most evident in the character of Pecos Hill (L.Q. Jones), who works for the sheriff but immediately finds loyalty to Buchanan once he discovers they are both from West, Texas. Jones is a hoot in the role, and you can see by Scott’s face that he’s enjoying the performance as much as the audience.

Scott was a giver when it came to performing. While making Ride Lonesome, he took Boetticher aside and asked who that kid in the red underwear was. James Coburn (in his first role) Boetticher replied. Let’s give him some more lines, Scott responded. So Kennedy did, and Coburn’s Whit might be the most beloved of the Ranown character actors. It might’ve even landed Coburn the role of the knife-throwing Britt in The Magnificent Seven, as Boetticher claims to have shown director John Sturges scenes while Sturges was still casting.

The Ranown westerns are loaded with such performances, and Buchanan Rides Alone has about a half-dozen of them, from Jones to Rojas to Leslie, Whitney, and Joe De Santis as Vega’s moneyman. It’s kind of ironic when you think about it that Buchanan Rides Alone should be accompanied by so many names.

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Written by Charles Lang
Based on the novel by Jonas Ward
Produced by Harry Joe Brown
Starring: Randolph Scott, Craig Stevens, Barry Kelley, Tol Avery, Peter Whitney, L.Q. Jones, Joe De Santis, Manuel Rojas, Robert Anderson
Columbia Pictures, Not rated, Running time 80 minutes, Opened Aug. 6, 1958

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