Popular reviews

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  Review by Bruno Andrade ★★★½ 1

  No apagar das luzes do RARBG, lembrem-se do seguinte:

  todas as obras, todos os filmes, todas as experiências que vocês tiveram acesso graças não apenas ao RARBG mas também ao SMz, ao TNT Village, ao e-mule (cerca de 60% dos Cottafavi disponíveis no KG vêm de lá, as primeiras cópias disponíveis na rede do Carmelo Bene, do Arrieta, do Viota e do Mario Schifano apareceram lá, e isso é uma fração minúscula do que só se tornou disponível graças ao e-mule), ao PTP etc. etc. etc.;

  quem equivaleu esse tipo de experiência, a bem dizer essa completa revolução na acessibilidade das obras e do conhecimento do cinema que foram os fóruns gratuitos de download (alguém tem dúvida, alguém questiona que…

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  Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★½ 13

  Sometimes I wonder whether the comfort I find in watching old Westerns has robbed me of my perspective when rating these films? You see there's hardly been a single one that I haven't liked, to some degree or another? Has Audie Murphy managed to sway my ability to judge him, or have I simply become that Western nerd that my wife jokingly warned me I was becoming? Regardless, I'm back in the Alabama Hills, California, with my favourite War veteran, and yet again he doesn't let us down.

  Audie Murphy plays Clay Santell, a horse trader on his way to purchase stock. When he's knocked out and dispossessed of his horse by a shotgun wielding robber, he manages to get…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

  Bleak mob mentality western. Director Sherman use of landscape and Audie Murphy's face against the subject matter is very good. A few short cuts, but a reminder that Murphy has a more interesting and complicated filmography than most stars from his generation.

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★½

  A solid, late George Sherman western, with a final 30 minutes that are truly excellent. As was characteristic of Sherman’s genre work, the movie looks terrific. Shot largely in the Alabama Hills, it’s full of unexpected splashes of green, and long shots of men riding across the screen in front of gorgeous mountain vistas.

  Stephen McNally is appropriately intense as the single-minded marshal, while Audie Murphy is resolutely morally grey as his quarry. Felicia Farr has little to do as the women he’s kidnapped but she’s as pretty as ever, and the movie miraculously ends without a scene confirming that her character and Murphy’s are a couple. Blessings upon Sherman for this small mercy.

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  Review by RanchoTuVu ★★★★

  Supposedly this was one of a string low budget westerns featuring Audie Murphy. It really doesn't look it though since the direction by George Sherman is spot on and the Technicolor is pretty dazzling. It looks like another classic western from the late 1950s, and it features Felicia Farr as Murphy's hostage as he escapes an insane posse led by Stephen McNalley. McNalley never looked more intense and kind of crazy than he does in this film. The film itself was probably an adult western because it's kind of intense. A shotgun killer murders a husband and wife in cold blood off screen but it seems kind of graphic anyway. Robert Middleton appears in the second half with two men…

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★½ 4

  The first of several cheap westerns that Audie Murphy made for Universal in the 1960s, Hell Bent for Leather is another solid Murphy western that's perhaps thankful to an excellent central villain performance.

  That comes from an enjoyably deranged Stephen McNally, as a crooked sheriff trying to pass Murphy off as a murderer who has plagued his town for some time. When he's not on screen, it can drag a little bit, especially in the middle third as Murphy gets more and more acquainted with Felicia Farr. In fairness to it, George Sherman stops it short of a tedious and predictable romance sub-plot.

  Instead he plays it out to a pretty good ending that has a nice sting to it…

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  Review by Rick Burin ★★★½

  “If there’s one thing I hate worse than a lawman, it’s a fink.”

  ***

  Audie Murphy’s horse trader gives a stranger a drink of water and lives to regret it in this sporadically spectacular B-Western, which is eloquent and beautifully directed, if possessed of a few obvious flaws.

  The opening 25 is sensational, with Murphy getting bushwhacked by a killer, spooking the inhabitants of a near-deserted town with a stolen shotgun, and then being menaced by psychotic marshal Stephen McNally, who decides that in lieu of catching his actual nemesis, he may as well just fit up a stranger.

  Then Murphy kidnaps notorious local woman Felicia Farr and flees for a rock crop on a two-horse buggy and the movie…

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  Review by Rutledal ★★★★ 1

  Aud-gust

  He seemed kind of ambivalent on leather to me.

  A case of mistaken identity and a dishonest ranger leads Audie Murphy to be on the wrong end of a manhunt through the hills. Another absolute gem of a B western.

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  Review by James Grimmer ★★★½

  There is a competence to Sherman's direction that is particularly evident during the scenes in which the townspeople mistake Santell for Travers, all of which are accompanied by body language and wordless expressions that convey how infamous Travers is. You get the impression that his reputation as a killer can't be ignored. In that regard, the fear among the townspeople couldn't be more palpable. In many respects, it is a characteristic that Sherman is attuned to; thus, the idea of Santell being perceived as a murderer even though he is nothing like Travers is all the more compelling.

  It doesn't take long until the attention that Santell receives catches up with him. In fact, there's a scene in which he…

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  Review by alexvlahov ★★★★★

  1. caught on 35mm at The New Bev
  2. love a mistaken identity movie
  3. “If there's one thing I hate worse than a lawman, it's a fink.”
  4. The Alabama Hills look incredible
  5. my first Audy Murphy outing

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  Review by Luscious Johnny V ★★★½ 2

  Hard not to think of this as a coded Civil Rights western, where institutional corruption, moral cowardice, and mob justice go hand in hand in hand. One of Murphy's better programmers and performances, too — he may be innocent but he's not wholly sympathetic, either — and the ever-reliable George Sherman knows better than to go in for easy bromides, scotching even the hint of romance between Murphy and Felicia Farr. Kudos, too, for reining things in at a trim, taut 80 minutes, even if that ending is a bit abrupt. The Alabama Hills have backdropped innumerable westerns but rarely have they looked as majestic and alien as they do here.

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  Review by Evelyn Rose

  "I used to love this country. Now it seems so ugly." Audie Murphy westerns are among twilight Hollywood's best-kept secrets. There's just something about Audie's fear-stricken face navigating a world of moral bankruptcy and sadism that sticks warmly in memory. This one has a particularly compelling narrative hook: Audie's an innocent mistaken for a killer, and Stephen McNally's marshal bounty-hunter knows it, but having lost hope of capturing the real outlaw, McNally tracks Audie anyway so to win the prestige of having caught an ostensible notorious badman. That makes for slow-building intrigue nastiness that suits Audie's strengths as a performer, rounded out nicely by McNally's delish twisted scowl in giant terrifying close-up and Felicia Farr's style inspo in sweeps of dusty wind. George Sherman's widescreen staging decisions are a pleasure to watch, varied and engaging throughout. A small forgotten gem for the western enthusiast.