Ride Beyond Vengeance

Plot synopsis:
A census taker (James MacArthur) arrives in the Texas town of Cold Iron, with a population of 789. He goes into the local bar for a cold beer, and tells the bartender the town has an unusual number of citizens named "Jonas" and "Reprisal." He observes a painting above the bar of a violent street fight. He is then told of the events behind the fight involving a buffalo hunter and gunman named Jonas Trapp and the night the local Mexicans still call "The Night of Reprisals".
In flashback, we learn that Jonas Trapp (Connors) is a poor cowboy in love with a wealthy woman named Jessie Larkin (Hays). They intend to marry despite the objections of her aunt (Ruth Warrick). The aunt sees Jonas as a man of no prospects and prefers she marry someone more substantial.
To gain the aunt's permission, Jessie pretends to be pregnant. Jonas marries her, but quickly tires of his dull life in town. He heads for the hills without her to become a buffalo hunter, hoping to amass enough money to give Jessie the life he feels she deserves, without her aunt's involvement.
Jonas is gone for more than 10 years. He amasses a small fortune of his own and a reputation as a dangerous gunman who once fought Clay Allison and walked away. He decides it is finally time to return home. On the trail, Jonas stumbles over the campfire of an obvious rustler and is ambushed by three men: Brooks Durham (Rennie), the local banker; John "Johnsey Boy" Hood (Bill Bixby), a sadistic young hustler with a love only of fine clothes and himself, and Coates (Claude Akins), a notorious drunk. They accuse him of being the rustler and, despite his denials, beat him, take his money, then brand him with a running iron and leave him for dead.
A farmer named Hanley finds Jonas and helps nurse him to health. Trapp, learning that his money has been stolen, is consumed by a desire for revenge and heads back for Cold Iron, where he learns from his father that Jessie's aunt has died and his wife is now engaged to another man - Brooks Durham. When Jessie encounters him on the street, she doesn't recognize him. She thinks he's just another "filthy, smelly animal" and runs away.
In the course of his remaining in town, Jonas continues hunting for the men who branded him. He takes "Johnsey-Boy" Hood on his way back from romancing the lonely wife of a local farmer (Gloria Grahame) in hopes of cheating her out of some money. Under the threat of being "branded and gelded" by Jonas, Hood's sanity cracks. He grabs the hot iron and rams it repeatedly into his stomach as he runs screaming into the woods. He later commits suicide.
Jonas also encounters the saloon bouncer (Buddy Baer), a giant of a man whom Jonas had met the night before. He(the bouncer) doesn't like the town laughing at him for letting Jonas leave the bar with a bottle of liquor that Jonas has promised to pay for later, and now wants the money for the bottle Jonas took the day before. The resulting fight presages the subject of the painting we saw in the framing sequence, and the bouncer is nearly beaten to death. Only the arrival of Jonas' father stops the fight.
Hanley is revealed as one of the rustlers involved with Coates. Coates kills Hanley when the old man denies having Jonas' money. Coates reasons that Durham must have it and tries a little blackmail. Durham threatens to kill Coates, but the alcoholic Coates is beyond reasoning. Jonas runs into Durham on the street, the last man on his list, but both are ambushed by Coates, who is on a drunken rampage. Coates is eventually beaten to a pulp by Jonas, then killed when he tries for his gun. That act of violence apparently takes the thirst for revenge out of Jonas and he leaves his now-empty forty-five behind on the bar.
When Durham finally confesses to the town what he and the other did to Jonas and that he took the money, Jonas can only knock him down in disgust and walk away. He leaves the cash - and his need for revenge - behind.
The flashback ends with Jonas mounted up and on his way out of town. Jessie pleads with Jonas to stay, but he demurs and the scene ends with her standing in the street as she watches him ride off.
The film ends with the bartender showing off the pistol Jonas left behind. He and the census taker wonder if Jessie left with Jonas. The bartender wants to believe she did, but the census taker says she probably didn't, echoing the film's song, says "You can never go home again."

Tags: violence

Review:
Although produced on a low budget by television producers Mark Goodson And Bill Toddman ("The Price is Right") and featuring several names mostly familiar to TV audiences, it has a dynamic, if pessimistic script more concerned with character development than standard action--not that the film lacks action or violence.
Cowboy Jonas Trapp (Chuck Connors of "Rifleman" fame) falls in love with the beautiful Jessie (Kathryn Hays), very appealing in her first film, a wealthy girl out of his humble class.
11 years later, with his self-made fortune, he sets out to return home, only to be set upon by three sadistic marauders, Michael Rennie, Bill Bixby and Claude Akins, who steal his money and leave him for dead.
Connors gives his best performance, and he is well (if briefly) supported by Joan Blondell (as a gossipy townswoman), Gloria Grahame (a cheating wife having an affair with Bixby), Gary Merrill as Jonas' foster father, Frank Gorshin as an arrogant ranch hand, and Buddy Baer as a Bouncer.
I grew up in Bay Saint Louis Mississippi.My Mother was makeup artist for the Little Theatre there(mid fifties).Under her influence I did my first role there(in my mid teens).The best character actor with the group was a man by the name of Mark Solomen.He helped coach me in my first role.At the time, he had just read what he said was the best western novel he had ever read.He ended up giving me the book.
At the time, I had no way of knowing that through a most unique set of circumstances I would end up launching a career in films myself(on Yancy Derringer, in 1958).Because I am a good horseman as well as a western type(6'4"anglo),by the mid sixties I was a seasoned veteran of the westerns of the era in both TV and feature films.
In the early sixties I became friends with Chuck connors,and ended up working for him as standin and horseback double on some of his western projects including Rifleman, Cowboy in africa,and Branded.
It was when we were doing the Branded series,and the time came for us to shut down for hiaetus.I was told we would be doing a movie with a thirty day shooting schedule in the meantime, and that I would shortly be called in to do make up and costume tests for Chuck,on lot three at MGM,with a skeleton crew.
Imagine,Bill Bixby,Jim Mc Arthur,Claude Akins,Paul fix,Michael Renny,etc.
Chuck Connors gives his best performance, as the hard-bitten buffalo hunter, whom abandoned his new bride (Kathryn Hays) to make a fortune for her.
Connors spends the rest of the film obtaining justice, both from the thugs and from the woman he left behind.The real acting kudos in this movie belong to Kathryn Hays, Gloria Grahame, Claude Akins and, most of all, Bill Bixby.
With excellent performances by Bill Bixby, Michael Rennie, Kathryn Hayes and Claude Adkins as a borderline psychotic who talks to his invisible friend "Whiskey Man."  This one is definitely worth catching and of late has appeared many times on the Westerns Channel where it is shown uncut and without commercial interruption which helps to add even more to the movement of the story.
Ride Beyond Vengeance casts Chuck Connors as a returning buffalo hunter returning to his wife after an eleven year absence.
Sounds a whole lot like the plot premise for the Iliad and Connors does go through some trials just like Ulysses did.Eleven years earlier Connors married Kathryn Hays who faked a pregnancy to get her aunt Ruth Warrick to consent to the wedding.
The three who do it are a pair of bottom feeding sadists Bill Bixby and Claude Akins and also Michael Rennie who's a rich man courting Hays because he and everyone else think her husband is dead.Connors ain't dead and when he wakes up he's going to take care of business the way Ulysses took care of all of Penelope's prospective suitors.This no frills B western has a fine supporting cast to Connors and Hays.
Later on Frank Gorshin in a small bit himself gives a description of Bixby's final moments that will unnerve you for days.Ride Beyond Vengeance is one brutal and savage western which no way would have made it in the days of those cowboy heroes for Republic.
Returning home after toiling eleven years as a buffalo hunter in order to to provide for his rich, estranged wife, Chuck Conners (in a terrific performance) is beaten, branded, and robbed of his life savings by banker/gambler Michael Rennie, psychotic dandy Bill Bixby, and drunken cowboy Claude Akins.
(and Akins imaginary friend!) Needless to say that Chuck's infuriated when he finds out that Rennie is courting his wife.Ride Beyond Vengeance is uniquely bookended by modern scenes of a visiting census taker being told the story by a bartender, in the exact place where Conners' vengeance went down.
It gives the unfolding events both a feel of historical significance and a sense of western mythology.Co-produced by game-show impresario Mark Goodson, this is stark, mean film, truly top-notch in terms of characterization and story.
Anyone who thinks the Italians had a monopoly on hard-boiled, violent westerns in the sixties really should see this!Bixby is a lot of fun to watch, especially in the scene where he's confronted by Conners on a lonely road and made to squirm.
And he's a psycho at the end.The character development is substantial on Connors (the good guy), Rennie (the bad guy), and Hays (the good guy's wife who is now with the bad guy).
Not really.Connor's character could fall in love and marry, but he wouldn't have let the Aunt influence his marriage or his wife.
He certainly would have left his home and wife as he did, but he never would have let himself get into that situation in the first place.Rennie did play a guy who could turn bad, but he didn't play a stupid man.
There are only two characters that are necessary to this movie: Connors and Akins.
It would be the exact same movie if Bixby, Rennie, O'Connell, Hays, Blondell and the rest were replaced, rewritten or discarded.
Connors fits the stoic lead character like a glove, in certain ways it's an extension of his Rawhide character, with the rest of the performers well cast in roles that weren't any stretch for them but which they play well.
Rugged Chuck Connors (in one of his best roles as a vengeful buffalo hunter) heads an impressive parade of Hollywood veterans and current TV stars that people this modestly pleasing and occasionally bloodthirsty Western saga: Claude Akins, Buddy Baer, Bill Bixby, Joan Blondell, Jamie Farr, Paul Fix, Frank Gorshin, Gloria Grahame, James MacArthur, Gary Merrill, Arthur O'Connell, Michael Rennie and Ruth Warrick.
Connors marries wealthy beauty Kathryn Hays (the then-Mrs. Glenn Ford) but seeks to make a fortune for himself in buffalo skins, a quest which takes him 11 years and earns him $17,000.
Bixby gets his in gruesome fashion to the torments they had themselves inflicted on Connors (with a branding iron), Akins is trashed and killed in the climactic bar-room brawl and Rennie (who is engaged to Hays) is unmasked as the thief of Connors' money.
The high point (or low point) comes when Chuck Connors is branded on his 45-inch chest with a red-hot iron shaped like a "T." Also worth noting is an eclectic, one-of-a-kind supporting cast which manages to find room for Bill Bixby, Jamie Farr, James MacArthur, Arthur O'Connell, Michael Rennie, Frank Gorshin, Gary Merrill, Paul Fix, and Claude Akins, as well as three veteran actresses: Joan Blondell, Ruth Warrick, and Oscar-winner Glorida Grahame.
A surprisingly good western in the 60s A nice way to present the Old West where the bartender played by Arthur O'Connell tells the story to the young man played by James MacArthur.
Jonas Trapp (Chuck Connors), buffalo hunter, returns home 11 years later and found his wife taking another wedding.
But the story becomes even more complicated when it is robbed on the way and marked with hot iron by three men (Michael Rennie, Bill Bixby and Claude Akins) one being the pretender (Rennie) to the wedding with his wife.
The scenes where Chuck Connors' character executes his plans for vengeance will most likely raise the eyebrows of viewers even in this day and age.
Though I don't think this movie was trying to ape spaghetti westerns that were coming out of Europe at the time, those who like spaghetti westerns will find extra interest, because in many ways this Hollywood western plays like one..
It is to my mind a classic example of the funk American Westerns had got themselves into at this juncture of genre film making.Michael Rennie and Bill Bixby are badly miscast, Claude Akins overacts to within an inch of his life (a rare poor show from him), while Bernard McEveety's direction shows why he was more at home in TV work.
(most likely built from Chuck Connors' woodenness) Script is weak, which leads to a story that is never once authentic in tone or feeling, scenarios that are meant to be telling are unconvincing and the action is laughably staged.No hidden or misunderstood gem here, just bad film making that irritates as opposed to entertaining.
But the director and producers were the same people behind the series BRANDED, starring Chuck Connors, which went out of production at just about the time that this movie was released.Chuck Connors plays Jonas Trapp, a proud but poor laborer in a small western town who -- as we learn from the backstory unfolded in a string of flashbacks -- married the wealthiest young woman in town (Kathryn Hays).
Unable to abide the ease of their life together, or to persuade her to join him in building up a fortune of their own, he lights out for the frontier to become a buffalo hunter, and, as the movie opens (following an introductory section set in 1966), he is returning home after 11 years, carrying over a decade's worth of hard-earned cash.
The leader of this trio, Coates (Claude Akins), is drunk and a little crazy to start with, and wants to hang Trapp as a rustler; the banker Durham (Michael Rennie), talks him out of that, despite the egging on off sleazy, fancy-dan hanger-on "Johnnsy" (Bill Bixby).
On a more positive note, it is entertaining to see these actors in something this jarring in its viciousness, and the supporting players populating the screen: Joan Blondell, Gloria Grahame (in too short an appearance), Gary Merrill, Frank Gorshin, and Buddy Baer, along with a youngish Jamie Farr; and, in the framing sequences, James MacArthur and Arthur O'Connell..
"Ride Beyond Vengeance" is a gritty, violent, but far from unsavory frontier western revenge saga starring Chuck Connors that could almost be mistaken for a Spaghetti western, except for its polished production values, its humane characters, and its offbeat ending.
Hollywood wasn't making westerns like this until a few years later after the Spaghettis had taken violence to more intense, savage levels.
In fact, in 1968, Chuck Connors followed a stream of American leading men who migrated to Europe to cash in on the Spaghetti western craze and played in a forgotten but rip-snorting little shoot'em up called "Kill Them All and Come Back Alive." Derived from Al Dewlen's novel "Night of the Tiger," "Ride Beyond Vengeance" begins in the contemporary Texas town of Cold Iron when an exhausted census taker (James MacArthur of CBS-TV's "Hawaii 5-0") visits a cafe and points out to the man behind the counter (Arthur O'Connell of "The Poseidon Adventure") that three names are popular with the town's folk.
Veteran TV director Bernard McEveety, who helmed episodes on virtually every major TV western series, including "Gunsmoke," "Branded," "Laredo," "Bonanza," and "Rawhide," takes us back to the past as O'Connell begins his narration about the turbulent events that rocked Cold Iron to its roots.The first set of flashbacks open with rugged Chuck Connors sporting a shaggy beard and riding a horse through the wilderness.
On his way back to Cold Iron, Jonas (Chuck Connors of "The Big Country") spots a campfire.
Crazy, pistol-toting Elwood Coates (Claude Atkins of "Return of the Seven"), handsome, well-dressed Johnsy Boy Hood (Bill Bixby of CBS-TV's "My Favorite Martian"), and local banker Brooks Durham (Michael Rennie of "The Day The Earth Stood Still") accuse Jonas of rustling cattle.
McEveety shows us the branding iron from Jonas's point of view so that the glowing end is hovering in our faces.We learn from another flashback in writer/producer Andrew J.
When everything is said and done, Jonas lets Brooks live and leaves the town and his wife again.Director Bernard McEveety must have relished this opportunity to make a grim, unrelenting western as opposed to the family friendly western fare that he had done for prime-time television.
In the process seasoned Hollywood celebrities like Joan Blondell and Gloria Grahame are squandered in peripheral roles as is Frank Gorshin who has one big scene where he describes the grisly death of Bill Bixby's character, particularly how Johnsy Boy's guts resembled blue snakes.
A seldom played film, this western has superb characterizations, good casting, a good story, but sometimes poor camera work and editing.
The camera and editing quality notwithstanding, their expertise in the art shine through.*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS *** The film contains some memorable scenes and portrayals: the angry focus of Jonas (Chuck Connors) while fighting with personal naive goodness, the latent evil within Johnsy Boy (Bill Bixby), Chuck Connors accosting Bill Bixby in the woods, the story telling in the bar by Tod (Frank Gorshin - who also played Riddler in the Batman series the same year), the clinging despair of Bonnie Shelley (Gloria Grahame) willing to do anything, Jessie's (Kathryn Hay) strong emotional rollercoaster changes, Mrs Lavender's (Joan Blondell) orbital character sketches, the borderline sanity of Elwood Coates (Claude Akins), Brooks Durham (Michael Rennie) riding along the edge of good and bad, the secret dream of Maria (Marissa Mathes) and onscreen smoking [it is still rare to see a woman in a western smoking a cigarette], Paul Fix (as Hanley) without teeth (reunited here with fellow 'Rifleman' Connors).
*** END POSSIBLE SPOILERS ***There's also a short appearance by a fairly young Jamie Farr, a decade after his film debut and a decade before his MASH series fame.This revenge' western story doesn't follow standard plot strategy so characters don't behave, and events don't progress, as one expects them to in a 'safe' storyline.
I think my summary quote might have been more appropriate for Bill Bixby's character Johnsy Boy after the old rifleman came on the scene for a little payback with the branding iron.
It looked like Gorshin was still stuck on his Riddler character from the Batman TV series of the mid-Sixties.So I just watched two Westerns back to back that ended with unsatisfying conclusions.
I guess one could make a case for Jonas Trapp (Chuck Connors) riding off into the sunset without his wife considering what happened here, but he went to a lot of trouble for nothing.
The casting is really eclectic, with players like Connors, Bixby, Gorshin, Michael Rennie, Kathryn Hays, Joan Blondell, Gloria Grahame, Claude Akins and Paul Fix. The Western movie character actors all made sense, but the rest looked a little out of place.
Even the opener was a little strange with the modern day setting resolving to a flashback to reminisce about La Noche del Tigre, the Night of the Tiger.But at least it had that great bar room brawl with Claude Akins up against Connors; that was one of the more memorable ones you'll find in a Western.
Chuck Connors plays Jonas Trapp, a cowboy that falls in love with a beautiful, but high tone, woman Jessie Larkin(Kathryn Hays).
And it is a good chance that Connors' fans wanted more out of this western.
Also featured: Michael Rennie, Claude Akins, Joan Blondell, Gary Merrill and Gloria Grahame.
It seems that years ago, Chuck Connors, a guy from the wrong side of the tracks fell in love with pretty Kathryn Hays, but her ailing aunt Ruth Warrick was opposed to them being married, and after walking out on her, Connors goes to make his fortune, returning nine years later to find out that he is not so welcome in his community.
On his way back, he is attacked by gamblers Bill Bixby, Michael Rennie and Claude Akins, and branded for allegedly stealing coffee from them, his money stolen, and left to die in the countryside.
Upon seeing Hays when he arrives in his hometown (late at night), Connors is rejected by her in the darkened streets for being just another drunken bum making a pass, and later finds out that she's engaged to marry the wealthy Rennie.
When Connors, who was believed to be dead, reveals himself for real, the town is turned upside down as a cloud of violence hangs over everybody for the wrongdoing done to him, leading to some ugly confrontations and some disgusting situations concerning his vengeance.Certainly, practically every western town or city once started off just as a few buildings and businesses, and as they grew, became bustling metropolises or communities.
Chuck Connors isn't really all that likable other than the few early romantic scenes he has with Hays, and as dashing as Rennie is, he's given a character that is completely vile beneath the silk suits he wears.
While it's true that this is not a "typical western" in the sense that the good guy wins, kisses the girl and rides off into the sunset, I don't believe it's a remarkable movie.Firstly, the typecasting of actresses such as Joan Blondell and Gloria Graham is obvious - they appear to be rehashing the roles they played in Other Men's Women and Human Desire, respectively.
He's lucid enough to know there is money involved in the scheme against Chuck Connors, but impaired enough to be controlled by the others in the gang for most of the movie.Bill Bixby's character is merely odd - a foppish, sadistic gigolo who develops some sort of conscience in the end.