A fun and exciting Western that entertains as much today as it did in wintry early 1950 when it was first released.After enjoying the film on a Saturday morning, which is the best time to enjoy films like THE NEVADAN, I read all 15 reviews posted here. Many are eager to point out how this humble film pales in comparison to the Westerns of Boetticher, Mann, and Peckinpah, lacking as it does deep psychological themes and Method actors wringing their hands and contorting their faces in painful introspection. There's an unwillingness or perhaps an inability to consider THE NEVADAN on its own merits. It's only aspiration was to entertain--and it succeeded.Now I'm not casting stones or even aspersions. I count myself among the guilty, admitting I too am unable to see this film wholly on its own. Each of us brings to the movie-going experience all we've already seen, and most people watching a 1950 Western are aging cinephiles bringing a LOT to the experience. For me, Forrest Tucker will always stir up fond memories of Sgt. Morgan O'Rourke. And when Jeff's dimwitted brother Bart pulled another boner, I was just waiting for Frank Faylen to look into the camera and mutter, "I gotta kill that boy; I just gotta" like he would a decade later on DOBIE GILLIS. Those associations added to my enjoyment.Speaking of Faylen and Jeff Corey as brothers Jeff and Bart, I suspect they were loosely based on brothers George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's 1937 novella Of Mice and Men. The script and the actors elevated Jeff and Bart far above the expendable and disposable "red shirt" henchmen of lesser Westerns. I can also see in them a foreshadowing of the memorable and scene-stealing Sam and Whit, the duo played by Pernell Roberts and James Coburn in RIDE LONESOME.The closing gunfight with Andy and Tom against Galt, Jeff, and Bart was a highlight, topped only by Andy and Tom's brawl to end it all in the collapsing mine. Karen's appearance added to the excitement, even as it allowed Tom to remind us he's the bad guy when he shoots Galt in the back. Jeff's ruthlessly shooting the mules and canteens showed the depth of his depravity, and lessened the regret I felt when he took a bullet to the brain (a surprisingly graphic scene for 1950, I thought).The grimness is balanced by lighthearted moments. An uncredited Nacho Galindo is funny as an apoplectic stagecoach driver. Also unbilled are Olin Howard and Lewis Mason as Rusty and Wilbur, two cowpokes straight out of a 1930's programmer who look for a laugh from supposed greenhorn Andy and get egg on their faces. It's a funny scene, but also serves as good character development as the audience is made aware that Andy is not the dapper tenderfoot he initially appeared to be.I saw THE NEVADAN as one of six films on Mill Creek's second Randolph Scott Round-Up DVD collection. The print is beautiful, the colors rich, and the price right--only about ten bucks! Slip it in on a Saturday morning and "forget about life for awhile," as Billy "the Kid" Joel once sang.PS: The gold fever that drove Galt to greed-driven madness and violence is a recurring theme in Westerns. No film captures it as well as A MAN CALLED SLEDGE, an under-appreciated 1970 film directed by Vic Morrow and starring James Garner, Dennis Weaver, and Claude Akins among others familiar faces to film and TV fans.

The Nevadan is a good entertaining, dependable Randolph Scott western, as he plays a mysterious loner, encountering a cast of interesting characters. I hate to give away the storyline, but imagine Forrest Tucker as the bad guy, the alluring and nice to look at Dorothy Malone, her nasty father's henchmen, including Jock Mahoney, a stolen shipment of gold, and some well placed shootouts. Perfectly paced and visually appealing, accomplished by the finest cinematography, thanks to Charles Lawton Jr and filmed on locations in magnificent Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California.Like I stated earlier, I hate to give away story lines and many have already given the reader adequate synopsis for this film. I can only add, if you are a fan of Randolph Scott and western genre from the 1950s, The Nevadan will not disappoint.

Unexceptional Westerns like this one almost always followed certain well-worn conventions. A few clips on the jaw and a man was unconscious. Men wore nondescript generic Western clothing, usually including a vest. The capo may have a string tie, possibly a suit, but most of the men wore neckerchiefs which were never used, as well as guns, which were. The girl friend was pure, although maybe mixed up. There was little in the way of character development and motivations were usually simple, as Galt's is here -- "gold fever", someone calls it. They were usually shot at a studio ranch or at Lone Pine or, as in this case, in both.Later in the 1950s ambitious directors like Anthony Mann introduced some life into the increasingly tired comic-book stories by giving us heroes who were neurotic and subsidiary characters with complicated motives. Other directors simply gave up trying and turned the cartoon into a parody, like one of those Steig cartoons in which a hand is seen drawing itself. Budd Boetticher was a director who gave up and reveled in the primitivism of the form.That's when Randolph Scott made the Westerns he's best known for, like "Ride Lonesome." Great title there. Scott's character was reduced to a prig, as morally upright as a gastropod on its poduncle, always putting temptation behind him, never telling a lie, rejecting offers of warmth and comfort from women -- a total bore, in other words. "The Nevadan" had the same producers as the later Boetticher films but Scott's character hadn't quite hardened into the inflexible clunk yet. He smiles here. He fibs too. He only shoots one guy, and not by outdrawing him either. It's an improvement over his later persona. But the villains aren't. Boetticher's villains were great -- Lee Marvin, Richard Boone, Pernell Roberts, James Coburn. The heavies here are not nearly as much fun. How can anyone take George MacReady seriously as a Western head heavy? He belongs in a corporation as part of a conspiracy. Faylen still sounds like the taxi driver in "Dark Passage." Ray Corey is supposed to have been a well-regarded drama teacher later on, and he gave a flawless performance in "In Cold Blood," but he brings nothing to the party here as a dull-witted joke. But the woman, Dorothy Malone, has never looked better, fresh faced, young, and innocent, as MacReady's daughter. Hollywood had a habit of glamorizing her to the point of unrecognizability. They gave her glossy hairdos, slick lips, two tons of pancake or waffle makeup, and false eyelashes the size of those canvas tarps you put up as extensions of your mobile home. She's a surprise. Nobody else in this movie is. But it's also worth mentioning Jock Mahoney as "Sandy," one of the bad guys. He was as homely as they come, but the man's physical presence was magnetic. I'm sure he didn't deliberately try for the effect but every swift movement was as graceful as a dancer's, the opposite of John Wayne who seemed to move by putting one or two limbs in motion and letting his torso follow them sometime later on. One example: watch the scene in which Malone gives Mahoney's horse a kick in the hindquarters and Mahoney finds himself splashing down into a creek, then spins the horse around and climbs the bank as if man and animal were one being, just as the Aztecs thought.

In an era of overbearing deep, so deep, psychological westerns, it's nice to know Hollywood still knew how to put together these shoot 'em ups. This A-grade production with the very good direction by Gordon Douglas behind it is not much, if not entertaining. Randolph Scott who was to begin an era of a-b grade westerns and make some so-called classic westerns with Budd Boetticher shows his interpretation of the gun-man with few words that he would use effectively later on to good effect. The plot has something to do with Scott being an Undercover marshall, gold and yes, bad guys who need to be gunned down. Anyway, it's all a mcguffin for a final sequence in a mine shaft that is breath-taking. Nice entertainment, at the least.