Raw Edge

It all starts in Oregon, where Herbert Ruddey is in charge. Women are chattel, and when his chattel, Mara Corday, says she was attacked, the man gets strung up. Up rides the dead man's brother, Rory Calhoun, who wrangles with all the men who want to rape Yvonne De Carlo, and to gain his revenge on Rudley.

It's the first feature directed by John Sherwood, and a clear indicator of why he would direct only two more. The movie seems to be put together in bits and pieces, shot entirely on sets -- although it was not -- and populated with the good-looking but mediocre at best performers which Universal kept foisting on the audiences in the 1950s between Sirk soapers. Everyone is brightly lit, showing off their spotless attire and perfectly coifed heads after they've ridden miles on the dusty trail, and while the script is far from the standard patterns of the B westerns of a decade earlier, it's all surface tension, with occasional musical stings from the library to try to raise the emotional level.

I suppose it was cheap enough that Universal showed a profit on it, or at least broke even, but I'd rather look at a Buster Crabbe B. At least he's having a good time watching Al St. John's antics, and not the dour and stupid characters here.

This edgy and off-beat western has plenty of seething resentment amongst its characters (and there are lots of them: vengeful gunslinger, baddie, baddie's dumb henchmen, local gambler, baddie's wife, baddies girlfriend...) but isn't too believable. Some good action scenes but only average over all. (5

I read the reviews here and wonder if anyone has a different interpretation. This movie is about the dark side of human nature where everyone is for themselves. I'm not sure if that message will catch but it will in another light if you consider more recent films such as the Dark Knight movies or the Man With No Name trilogy. In many movies, there are no real heroes. So even the women in this movie don't have emotional reaction when something tragic happens to a close person. The hero Tex Kirby comes back for revenge of his brother, or is it? Paca who loses her husband finds an cold unexpected way to get revenge. The Indian maids who leave Hannah (Yvonne De Carlo) and the ranch are neutral characters but still, they do what's best in their interest. So at the end, it is easy for Hannah to have no love lost and be willing to leave with the hero.

The wild west was an arena where you had to watch your back. The setting was a wild 1842 Oregon where there are no rules. It was lawless and you defended yourself. Even those you think you can trust, can you really trust them? The rancher who makes the rules, Gerald Montgomery makes very harsh rules. Take a woman like she is property if she has no husband. One evil character shoots his father in the back. No one cries in this movie. Violence, lawlessness and war dull the emotions. We know that where even young children exposed to war get emotionally insensitive to death. It is unusually violent for a movie in the mid-50s depicting rape, murder (of relatives), treachery and lawlessness. It seems really that the Yakima Indians are the only ones with a code, law or ethics.

A question is what degrees of evil and selfishness are there?

If you watch the movie with this in mind, you can see the message. But most people won't see it that way, but will get confused by the mindless violence and unemotional characters. In this way, it's an unusual minor masterpiece.

The evil characters are definitely fun. Overall, supporting roles are well-acted but the leads are very average. The script does not lead to a clearer message and a viewer could get lost in its meaninglessness. Other than the message and supporting actors, the movie is fairly average. So an average rating might be 5-6 for me, but the supporting actors and dark message are fascinating and bump it to a 7 even 7.5. If you don't understand it, it's a 5 or 6.

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.

Raw Edge is quite a fascinating little (a brief 75 minutes long) western given it was made in 1956 and that the overarching theme being examined in the film is the place and status of women in the "Wild West"; a theme which in the light of ongoing contemporary events, still resonates strongly in the second decade of the 21st century.

I have no idea whether there is any historical basis at all to the fictional events depicted in Raw Edge. Unlike one or two other reviewers at this site however, I'd respectfully suggest that the sort of story we see, set in a frontier settlement with no organised legal. judicial or religious institutions, is not unimaginable. Historically men are drawn to civilisation's peripheries in far more dominant numbers than women.

Besides its very intriguing story, the film looks great in technicolour and makes very good use of its location photography. Rory Calhoun and Yvonne De Carlo are fine in the lead roles, displaying an innate chemistry occurring between their characters, in spite of their frequent antagonistic clashes. Good to see the Native Americans are treated in a very sympathetic light too, with the status of their female characters contrasting markedly with those of the whites.

The main bone of contention that does need to be raised is the frequent anachronistic aspects employed in moulding this fringe story into an action western setting. Therefore though set in 1842 Oregon, the film in its fashions, weapons and even buildings (Montgomery's palatial lodge) seems to be occurring 30 - 40 years later in time. A small price to pay in my opinion for an engrossing oater.