Ride Clear of Diablo

Director Jesse Hibbs does a sterling job with B material. He extracts one of Duryea's best performances as the backshooting killer who actually has some decency and gets to like Murphy for being so honest.

Murphy, a more limited actor than Duryea, also performs credibly throughout, and supporting actors like Paul Birch (Sheriff Kenyon) and William Pullen (Lawyer Meredith) only add to the film's overall quality, as the top heavies.

Even pretty Susan Cabot, a substandard actress at the best of times, does well.

Photography is typical B quality, and the script not bad at all, with Cabot asking Murphy if the tunnel is long enough. I can only wonder if Hitchcock saw this film and decided to use a similar, but subtler, line at the end of NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

You could do a lot worse than watch this likeable and unassuming Western.

A strong supporting cast and good writing make this one of Audie's better efforts from this period before westerns devolved into parodies of themselves.

Dan Duryea and Russell Johnson (the professor from Gilligan) have surprisingly interesting roles. Duryea plays the bad guy with the good heart. Johnson plays an apparent weak drunkard who surprises.

Audie plays it straight as a naive young man, Clay Omara, seeking justice for the slayers of his brother and father but every once in a while shows he's tougher and smarter than the average bad guy.

Abbe Lane and Susan Cabot add a dash of spice. Lane is the saloon girl with the heart of gold. Cabot is the sheriff's niece engaged to the town lawyers who it is immediately apparent will fall for Clay.

Murf plays a man intent on revenging the murder of his kin. To give the appearance of helping him he is deputized by a renegade sheriff and sent off on a mission sure to cause his death at the hands of psychotic killer Whitey Kincaid. When things don't go as the lawman planned he and his henchmen must try other measures to get the pesky little rascal off their scent or be found out as the very ones Murf is seeking. Average western with Duryea giving quite a performance as the always jolly, backshooting scumbag Kincaid.

Ride clear of Diablo is my favourite Audie Murphy western.Its exciting,suspenseful and the rapport between audie and Dan Duryea is great.This film is highly enjoyable with humour and a good twist in the end.This is a feel good western.

Someone guns down Audie Murphy's father and brother and steals their cattle, so Audie pins on a badge and goes hunting Dan Duryea. After he brings in his man, giggling madman Duryea is cleared in court by corrupt lawmen Paul Birch and Russell Johnson. Duryea takes a shine to Murphy's naive honesty.

It's a well written western, and if Duryea dominates the movie, it's all offered pretty much in the wheelhouse of the leads. It's another of Universal's "shaky A" westerns, focusing more on character and story than the declining B westerns of the era. Jesse Hibbs, in his second time wielding the megaphone, does a good job, and seems to have established enough of a rapport with Murphy to direct half a dozen of his movies over the next four years. He was born in 1906. By the time he was 30, he was an assistant director, and was that on more than fifty films. With the decline of lesser productions, he shifted to directing TV westerns and episodes of THE FBI. He died in 1985.