Ride Lonesome (1959) + Comanche Station (1960) [The Criterion Collection]

Ride Lonesome (1959) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053220/

Director: Budd Boetticher
Writers: Burt Kennedy
Stars: Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts

Mysterious motivations drive taciturn bounty hunter Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott) to capture a wanted murderer—but his quest is complicated when he is accosted by a pair of outlaws who have their own inscrutable reasons for riding along. Masterfully scripted by Burt Kennedy, who weaves a complex web of ambiguous loyalties and motives, and featuring supporting turns by genre icons James Coburn (in his film debut) and Lee Van Cleef, the first of the Ranown westerns to be shot in CinemaScope makes striking use of the enlarged frame—with a final shot that stands as perhaps the single most unforgettable image in the series.


Comanche Station (1960) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053729/

Director: Budd Boetticher
Writers: Burt Kennedy
Stars: Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Akins

The last collaboration between Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott brings the Ranown westerns full circle, reexamining many of the films’ key themes and tropes: greed, loyalty, hidden motivations, and the fine moral line that separates heroes from villains. Scott stars as the enigmatic Jefferson Cody, who rescues a woman kidnapped by Comanches for reasons that may have nothing to do with the bounty offered for her return. But before he can bring her to safety, he’ll have to contend with the dangers of the Comanche warpath and a trio of bounty hunters who have designs on the reward.


Extras:
- New 4K digital restorations by Sony Pictures Entertainment, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
- Introductions to the films by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Taylor Hackford
- Audio commentary featuring film historian Jeremy Arnold on Ride Lonesome and Hackford on Comanche Station
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing



The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher:
The five briskly entertaining, vividly performed westerns made by director Budd Boetticher and strapping star Randolph Scott in the second half of the 1950s transcend their B-movie origins to become rich, unexpectedly profound explorations of loyalty, greed, honor, and revenge. Often grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) and colorfully scripted by Burt Kennedy and Charles Lang, these films seem to unfold in a world unto themselves, staking a claim between traditional westerns and the subversive genre revisionism of the 1960s—and representing the crowning achievement of the underappreciated auteur Boetticher.