From The Scott-Boetticher Middling List


Decision At Sundown To Fill '57 Drive-In Lots

Budd Boetticher liked this less than some of his others with Randolph Scott. Was the star miscast? He's trapped in a barn for almost the whole thing, that not preferable for we who pay, but there had to be differentiation now and then for westerns done like monthly magazines. Decision At Sundown is still "head and holsters" above average run of Scotts. Beside his for Warners, it's even more a keeper, but would have been better had Burt Kennedy wielded the pen rather than credited Charles Lang, Jr. Kennedy said later that he was on hand to do fixes, which may explain portions being up to Tall T standard. How much did 1957 patronage recognize tiers of western quality? Given enough popcorn or drive-in distraction, would one R. Scott materially differ from another? Surely the team went proud for work so fine as these Columbias.I wonder what push Randy himself applied to upgrades. Support cast said his downtime was spent poring The Wall Street Journal, but Scott knew riches weren't earned with lame product. As producer, standards were his to maintain, despite good westerns drawing little better than average ones (exception: a High Noonwith below-surface themes intelligencia could glom onto). The 50's didn't tender a more defeated hero than Scott's in Decision At Sundown, crowds and cars exiting in somber mode from an end bleak as the era gave them. It took some nerve to drop the curtain on a finish like this. Had sameness of TV westerns inspired Scott and team to dare something different?

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