TREASURE OF RUBY HILLS. Allied Artists, 1955. Zachary Scott, Carole Mathews, Dick Foran, Barton MacLane, Lola Albright, Raymond Hatton, Lee Van Cleef, Stanley Andrews and Steve Darrell. Screenplay by Tom Hubbard and Fred Eggers, based on the pulp story “The Rider of the Ruby Hills” by Louis L’Amour, written under the pen-name Jim Mayo (West, September 1949), later expanded to the novel Where the Long Grass Blows (1976). Directed by Frank McDonald. Currently available on YouTube here.

   There’s no treasure, and we never actually get to the Ruby Hills, but here’s an intelligent Western, well-played, with some interesting noirish angles.

   Things kick off fast, with Zachary Scott and his aging outlaw buddy waiting nervously for their partner to return with his end of a land-grab they’re plotting. He gets back, mission accomplished, and in a voice like a dead man’s, tells his friends who killed him.

   It’s obvious from here that the game’s afoot, as they say in shoe stores, but things pause for a short word from an aging sheriff to the effect that Darrell’s past is catching up with him, and Scott would be wise to part ways before it does. It’s a thoughtful moment that turns moving when Darrell opts to send Scott on alone while he lingers in a ghost town to “see some old friends.”

   Then it’s back to the plot: quarreling cattle barons, and a third party keeping things stirred up for his own ends. Scott has grabbed the water rights to the whole valley, but there’s so much going on around him, that detail seems to get lost in the shuffle. What we get is a vigorous shoot-out, a desperate escape through dark alleys and shadowy stables, a showdown between Scott and Lee Van Cleef, and a final set-to back in the old ghost town where it all started.

   Along the way we get some finely-etched characters. Zachary Scott, a native-born Texan and a figure of moral ambiguity in the movies, combines both aspects quite effectively. He really does look like a man who’s been mixing in low company a little too long. And he comes up against tough Carole Mathews (one of Corman’s Swamp Women) as a gal who clearly has her own plans. Gordon Jones vacillates quite well as her double-dealing brother, Lee Van Cleef struts his razor-sharp villainy, and Dick Foran, on his way to becoming a fine character actor, does an excellent turn as a contemplative, pipe-smoking schemer.

   Writers Hubbard & Eggars make the story a little too convoluted, and director Frank McDonald lets the reins slacken now and again, but for the most part things move swiftly and agreeably here, and the result is a solid B-western I can highly recommend.