Truly Dreadful Film

Sadly Over-hyped

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Both are films made by Robert Ryan in the early 50's and they would make a terrific double feature.A comparison of the two movies is also interesting The Racket was done for Howard Hughes' RKO studio. Horizons West was a Universal picture. Both had famous directors, John Cromwell, (supplemented by several others, including Nicholas Ray) and Bud Boetticher. The Rackett is a re-working of a successful play and movie from the 1920's with a screenplay by WR Burnett, (High Sierra among others). Horizons West is done by Louis Stevens, a veteran writer of movie westerns, (this appears to be his best work). Ryan is the main "bad guy" in both movies but in each case, he's much more complex than that. His Nick Scanlon in The racket is violent and intimidating, almost reptilian. He's fully formed as a heavy from the moment we meet him. But we find out he either grew up with or went to school with Robert Mitchum's police Captain: in the grand tradition, they came from the same background but went in different directions. We also learn that Ryan sent his now troublesome younger brother to college to keep him out of the rackets. He clearly doesn't think much of the crooked politicians and new "corporate" crooks that are running things. And in the end, his revenge is to "tell the voters to vote for the honest politicians". Underneath the violence, he has a certain integrity. Something- we never learn what turned him against society while Mitchum remained well-adjusted and on the right side of the law. In Horzions West, Ryan starts out being a good guy, or at least not a bad guy yet. He comes home from the Civil War with his brother, (Rock Hudson), and a loyal friend named "Tiny", (James Arness). As they arrive in Texas, they have a conversation about the future. Arness wants to raise his family. Hudson wants to work the family ranch, just like before. Ryan shows a harder edge. He wants to make it big. They arrive in town, (Austin) to see that Yankees carpetbaggers have made it big. Ryan ties to associate with them but gets on the wrong side of Burr in poker game and is on the outside looking in. He organizes a band of out-of-work soldiers and deserters into a cattle rustling operation and establishes connections with a Mexican military officer who is running a crooked operation across the border. Eventually he gets even with Burr, who is killed. And has an affair with Burr's pretty young wife, (Julie Adams). In the beginning our sympathy is with him but as he grows more and more powerful, he becomes more ambitious and ruthless, which makes him too many enemies and causes his eventual downfall. In Horizons West, Hudson becomes the town sheriff and has to take on his brother, thus paralleling the Ryan-Mitchum relationship in The Racket. In that film, Ryan killed a policeman played by William Tallman, who became famous as Hamilton Burgers on Perry mason. In Horizons West, he kills Hudson's deputy, who is played by Jim Arness, soon to be famous as Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. William Conrad, radio's Matt Dillon, appears as a corrupt policeman in The Racket. That film has two actors from Perry mason, the other being Ray Collins, who played Lt. Tragg. Horizon's West has two actors form Gunsmoke, with Dennis Weaver playing a very un-Chester-like gunman. Both films have a heavy dose of corrupt public officials. Both of them have a major movie star to face off against Ryan, although Rock Hudson was early in his career and never became the dramatic force Mitchum was. But Ryan dominates every scene he's in, no matter who is in it with him.

Okay, we know there are only seven basic plots but lots of times an imaginative writer and/or director can disguise just which one they are offering to us; at other times, like here, they can't be bothered, so we have two brothers, Robert Ryan and Rock Hudson, returning home to Austin after four years on the losing side in the War Between The States. For Hudson it's like he's never been away and he's more than happy to resume life in the ranch for father John McIntyre. Ryan is a horse of a different colour. Though he hasn't got change of a match he has ambition and next thing you know he's organised a gang of deserters and dead-beats into castle rustlers and inside two more reels he owns half the state. Naturally this being 1952 and all the message loud and clear is Crime Does Not Pay so he gets it where the chicken got the axe. Hands up if you spotted anything new here. I thought not. It's watchable at least with other familiar faces like soon-to-be double act on Gunsmoke James Arness and Dennis Weaver albeit on opposite sides plus Universal contractee Julia Adams.

Horizons West casts Robert Ryan and Rock Hudson as the Hammond brothers, Confederate veterans of the Civil War who take different lessons from losing the conflict. Rock just wants to go back and settle down with their parents John McIntire and Frances Bavier and make their cattle ranch pay. Robert Ryan does not like being on the losing side and wants to be rich and powerful.Only problem is that Yankee carpetbaggers like Raymond Burr are grabbing everything in the South that's of any value. After a humiliating poker defeat from Burr, Ryan vows to get even and get Julie Adams who is Burr's wife and whom he takes a fancy to.Budd Boetticher directed this and while Boetticher is more famous for some of the features he did with Randolph Scott, this one has a lot to recommend it. Ryan gives a powerful performance as a man twisted by both revenge and defeat. He does defeat Burr, but in the process loses his humanity and his family though he gains Adams for what good that does him in the end.This western is also has a dubious distinction of boasting performances by James Arness and Dennis Weaver before they co-starred in Gunsmoke. Arness plays a Confederate veteran friend of both Hammond brothers who gravitates to Hudson. Weaver is another Confederate veteran who becomes Ryan's second in command in the rustling gang he first organizes in his quest for power.Horizons West still holds up well for today's audiences. Recommended highly for western fans, Budd Boetticher fans, and Robert Ryan fans.

the best thing about this western is its title. the next best thing is its glorious technicolor imagery. the 'look' of this film makes it a classic western - fully lit western skies, iconographic star close ups of confederate soldiers and texas belles - richly textured in luscious technicolor. the title - horizons west - and the beauty of the images sum up the idea of manifold destiny and western expansion. curiously the narrative itself contradicts the look as elder brother robert ryan abandons the simple homestead lifestyle for the corruptly sophisticated attractions of town life. as younger brother (rock hudson)is pitted against older brother (ryan), there are suggestions of biblical undertones. hudson, now a deputy marshal, eventually hunts down ryan for murder thereby restoring the idea of honesty and integrity as part of western expansion.