Colorado Territory **** (1949, Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone, Henry Hull, John Archer) – Classic Movie Review 6,442

Raoul Walsh’s powerful 1949 Western film Colorado Territory gallops along, with a moody, fatalistic atmosphere swirling around Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo, plus a dark film noir look refreshingly unusual in a Western.

Director Raoul Walsh remakes his own gangster classic High Sierra (1941) in Western guise with dependable Joel McCrea in the old Humphrey Bogart part as a weary, desperate outlaw on the run from the law, after a jailbreak to commit one last railroad robbery in Colorado territory.

His his new partners in crime include the alluring dance-hall girl Colorado Carson (Virginia Mayo). But then McCrea’s Wes McQueen meets pretty settler Julie Ann Winslow (Dorothy Malone) and thinks he could perhaps give up a life of crime.

Raoul Walsh’s powerful 1949 Western film Colorado Territory gallops along, with a moody, fatalistic atmosphere swirling around Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo, plus a dark film noir look in Sid Hickox’s black and white cinematography that is refreshingly unusual in a Western.

Walsh’s direction again impresses, particularly in the finale where the humans meet their inevitable destiny overshadowed by the towering mountains.

Also in the cast are Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone, Henry Hull, John Archer, James Mitchell, Morris Ankrum, Basil Ruysdael, Ian Wolfe, Harry Woods, Houseley Stevenson and Frank Puglia.

This Warner Bros movie is written by John Twist and Edmund H North, produced by Anthony Veiller and scored by David Buttolph.

It was remade again in 1955 as I Died a Thousand Times with Jack Palance.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6,442

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