hyped garbage

As Good As It Gets

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The acting in this movie is really good.

"Raw Edge" is an exploitation Universal western in its story and direction but shot in classic settings. It was directed by John Sherwood who was a great assistant director (he worked for Anthony Mann, Bud Boetticher, Max Ophüls, John Sturges, ...). Harry Essex wrote the script of "Raw Edge", he wrote also scripts for Jack Arnold, and the three movies John Sherwoood shot were like Jack Arnold's movies, "The Creature Walks Among Us" and "The Monolith Monsters" being the two others."Raw Edge" describes how sex could have been in those times with workers having no home and being strong alcoholics. There are scenes never seen before in a western, like the one with Neville Brand and Yvonne de Carlo. So "Raw Edge" cannot please to westerns purists, it's more a western for 1956 youth watching it in a drive-in in their muscle-car, looking for sex and violence. Rory Calhoun had already played in the western "Four Guns To The Border" directed by Richard Carlson in which there also were very erotic scenes with Colleen Miller. How could those scenes have been through the censorship? Beginning of the end...

Set in the days of the Oregon Territory, Raw Edge is one of your more adult westerns made during the Fifties at a time when westerns were trying to compete with westerns shown on television. The Saturday matinée kids of the Thirties and Forties did not see westerns that were about sex.John Gavin married to Mara Corday insults Yvonne DeCarlo in the eyes of her husband Herbert Rudley who is the local Ponderosa owner in the area. But this guy has a lot more power than Ben Cartwright ever dreamed of. He's a veritable medieval lord of the manor and he's in charge of the women who in pioneer Oregon are the most valuable commodity around.Gavin is hung as per Lord Rudley's orders and Mara Corday who is a mixed racial women is then 'assigned' to Robert J. Wilkie also per Lord Rudley's orders. That's how it is in his part of Oregon.That is until former Texas Ranger Rory Calhoun arrives in town and is greeted with his brother's lifeless swinging body. He wants answers and wants them now.Which presents a peculiar conundrum for a lot of people. They're all under Rudley's thumb, but they also realize that there's still a shortage of women and Yvonne DeCarlo's one most desirable woman. And she'd also be a wealthy widow. And Corday has a tribe of relations ready to take up her cause as well.All in all Raw Edge with its emphasis on sex and women as valuable commodities is an unusual, but entertaining western. Besides those I've mentioned look for good performances from Rex Reason as a cynical gambler and a father and son pair of lowlifes, Emile Meyer and Neville Brand.Definitely one adult western.

No doubt thinking he had made a wise decision, Gerald Montgomery (Herbert Rudley) creates a law by which any woman without a man will be the property of the first man who finds her. Well, this trashy but fun western shows how this will have the opposite effect . Quoting Pauline Kael about trashy movies:"What gives this trash a lift, what makes it entertaining is clearly that some of those involved, knowing of course that they were working on a silly shallow script and a movie that wasn't about anything of consequence, used the chance to have a good time with it." Writers Harry Essex (Creature from the Black Lagoon) and Robert Hill (The Private Lives of Adam and Eve) knew for sure what trash was about. There is a big flaw in the script already mentioned in another comment, in how could Montgomery being responsible for the death of Paca's (Mara Corday) husband, allowed her to go to her tribe, without predicting she would turn against him. Apart from this, "Raw Edge" is a good western, violent for its time, entertaining and with Yvonne de Carlo sexier than at any other film she made.

In 1842, Oregon, might makes right. And might belongs to Montgomery, who rules over the land. One of his "laws" is that any "free" woman rightfully belongs to the first man who claims her, until his death. And he has claimed the desirable Hannah (Yvonne De Carlo - no wonder she made so many Westerns, that woman can ride!). When the brother of a man whom Montgomery unjustly sentenced to hanging comes looking for revenge, Montgomery's protectors decide to side with him, hoping to see their boss dead and his wife open to re-claiming. The threat of rape, if not explicit then certainly strongly implied, hangs over the proceedings throughout "Raw Edge", giving the film an unpleasant air (this is definitely no family fare). Even the "hero", or at least the person who comes closest to that description (Rory Calhoun), is morally questionable at best. But the cast is good, and the film is beautifully shot in natural locations and vivid Technicolor. **1/2 out of 4.