The Walking Hills (1949)

Sorry, this movie sucks

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Exceptional film noir - if not one of the ten best of this great genre, then certainly one of the 20 best. Fabulous directing by Sturgis. Great script. Splendid acting, especially by Scott (of course), Raines, and Buchanan. No score, but fine music provided by one of the treasure hunters, played by veteran bluesman Josh White. The group contains a black and an Indian. Both are treated with respect at a time when race hate was the norm. Just a wonderful effort by all concerned.

Shifting desert sand dunes lend their character to the title of the picture, otherwise "The Walking Hills" might not make much sense. The picture draws heavily from the Bogart classic "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", but instead of three intrepid prospectors hooking up with a fourth, here we have nine members of an expedition joined by a female traveler (Emma Raines) with a score to settle, or at least find closure if that be her fate.Randolph Scott portrays the nominal leader of the rag-tag desert bunch; funny how in retrospect his character's name (Jim Carey) conjures up a rather different image if you choose to dwell on it. Other members of the gold hunting party include William Bishop, Arthur Kennedy, John Ireland and the always reliable Edgar Buchanan. Considering that Scott's character is the one supposed to have the most common sense and leadership ability, I was consistently distracted by the idea that he would bring a favored mare about to foal into a scorching desert where the threat of a sand storm was ever imminent.A rather stunning casting decision for the film involved the presence of blues guitarist and singer Josh White. He's on hand it seems, primarily to lend his voice to a handful of bluesy numbers that emotionally affect his fellow travelers to varying degrees, though his presence has no additional impact on the story line. Among White's career accomplishments was his being the first black singer to give a White House command performance in 1941 for then President Roosevelt.For a rather short film clocking in at around seventy eight minutes, the story manages it's fair share of character development among the principles while a trio of players (Bishop, Jerome Courtland and Arthur Kennedy) each harbor an innate fear of their questionable past being discovered. The ride off into the sunset so to speak, by Ella Raines' Christy and Bishop's Davey Wilson character may leave one somewhat baffled considering what went before, but no more so than the shifting sand dunes that render their verdict for the remaining wanderers.

Since 1945 when Randolph Scott decided to concentrate almost exclusively on westerns only one of his westerns was set in the modern west and that is this one, The Walking Hills. Shot on location the film holds it own with such gold hunting classics as The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre and Lust For Gold.Sitting around a poker table one night Edgar Buchanan starts recounting a tale in which a wagon train loaded with sacks of gold dust got lost in the desert in the great Southwest. They're quite an assortment of characters in the place, they include at least one private detective in John Ireland and he's after one of the people in the room. But more than one of them has a reason to fear the law.So all that were in that small barroom set out to the desert fueled by another story that Jerome Courtland tells about coming across an old wagon wheel that would have been contemporary with that gold train. Quite an assortment go besides those in the cast I've already mentioned the guys include William Bishop, Arthur Kennedy, Joe White, Russell Collins and Charles Stevens. Bishop adds an additional plot component, not only is he a suspect, but he's wooing Ella Raines who used to go out with Scott. As for Scott he's concerned with a mare in foal and he brings her along as well. Later on Ella Raines declares herself in on the gold hunt.Although with a lot more cast members out in the desert some people's true nature starts to surface. Quite a few of the cast meets their doom. As for the gold, just about the same ironical ending as in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre.In a book on the Films of Randolph Scott there's a story told about Ella Raines's husband Ransom Olds who was an air ace from the recent war and would be one again in Korea and Vietnam. It seems as though for a joke he buzzed the company on location. He thought it was funny, but the roaring jet passing over frightened all the horses and the wranglers spent the rest of the day rounding them up. Ella was not amused either, nor I'm sure was Harry Cohn.Not as good as Lust For Gold or The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, The Walking Hills still holds its own with the others and holds up well for today's audience. Greed is a timeless and universal theme.

Excellent western ,where what is apparently the main subject (the search for gold) is actually of secondary importance in the end.The director is much more interested in his characters and the relationships that are formed between them.He superbly films the desert ,which has got something lunar ,disturbing ;the signals in the distance increases this feeling of mystery.Even the flashbacks are strange ,they seem completely out of place (Ella Raines could have told her story ) and they add to the threatening atmosphere.Most of the time,the viewer does not know who is searching who and almost all the action takes place in the same place (apart from the beginning) ,which is very rare in a western.Impressive sand-storm scene.