Tonight's Movie: Horizons West (1952) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

HORIZONS WEST (1952) is one of a number of interesting Westerns released on Blu-ray this year by Kino Lorber.

HORIZONS WEST, which came out a couple of weeks ago, is a colorful Universal Pictures film about a pair of brothers newly returned to Texas after the Civil War.

Neil (Rock Hudson), who was adopted by the Hammonds (John McIntire and Frances Bavier), looks forward to returning to ranching alongside his foreman and friend, Tiny (James Arness).

Neil's older brother Dan (Robert Ryan) resents having served on the losing side of the war and especially resents not having much money.  He's out to make it in the fastest way possible, and in so doing he ultimately replaces the nasty local power broker (Raymond Burr), becoming evil himself in the process.  Soon it's brother pitted against brother, with Neil taking the side of justice.

I first saw this film in 2010, and as has become a pattern here of late, I enjoyed it more on this revisit.  I still have issues with it, but I usually find it helps knowing what to expect going in; there are also a number of factors which balance out the problems.

The list of things I enjoy starts with the beautiful opening credits and the film's gorgeous Technicolor, as filmed by Charles P. Boyle.  There's just nothing like the colorful look of Universal's opening credits sequences, which also happen to list a significant number of fine actors who make the film worthwhile.

Julie Adams, who plays Burr's wife, is absolutely gorgeous; her character is also intriguing, as she shifts her allegiance from her husband to the new power player in town, Dan. Unanswered questions hang over her and her relationship with her husband, but she's so beautiful we don't care too much about her character being relatively unexamined.

Hudson and most of the cast are all quite likeable, while Ryan is stuck playing an angry man we never really understand.  Some bitterness after war's end, sure, but what in his background led him to flip to becoming such a greedy, extremely bad person?  In this case the lack of understanding matters much more than with Adams' character, because it's Dan's actions which propel the story.

While Ryan's character becomes tiresome, he's surrounded by so many good actors -- also including Dennis Weaver, Tom Powers, John Hubbard, Walter Reed, Rodolfo Acosta, and Douglas Fowley -- that it's worth seeing the movie through, all the more as it's so visually pleasing.  It's only a middling film in my book, yet in the end it's one worth checking out.

The movie has a story and screenplay by Louis Stevens and runs a quick 81 minutes.  It was directed by Budd Boetticher.  Earlier this year I reviewed Boetticher's WINGS OF THE HAWK (1953), which also starred Julie Adams.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray is a strong print with excellent sound.  Extras include the trailer, three additional trailers for films available from Kino Lorber, and a commentary track by Westerns expert Toby Roan.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.

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