IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

When one thinks of Westerns, one pictures sagebrush, dusty trails, sandstone buttes, and other features of an arid landscape.  However, there is a small subset of the genre, from William Wellman’s The Track of the Cat (1954) to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Hate (2015) in which the desert and plains are replaced with the even more unforgiving terrain of frozen snowdrifts.  One of the best and most influential of these “snow Westerns” is director Andre De Toth’s Day of the Outlaw (1959), which has recently been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

Day of the Outlaw has a three-act structure, but only the final two acts really worked for me.  The story begins with a quarrel between cattle baron Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) and homesteader Hal Crane (Alan Marshal). Crane is fencing off his land with barbed wire, blocking the cattle trail, but the real bad blood between neighbors is due to Starrett’s designs on Crane’s wife, Helen (Tina “TV’s Ginger” Louise).  This feud is set aside when a band of outlaws, on the run from the U.S. Cavalry, enter the town and hold it hostage.  The thugs would like nothing better than to get drunk and ravage the townswomen, but they are held in check by their leader, army captain Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives).  Unfortunately, the captain is critically wounded, so it is questionable whether he will survive until morning, when the outlaws plan to move out to avoid capture.  Tension is high, as the ailing Bruhn struggles to keep his hold over his men, while Starrett tries to keep the townsfolk from doing something stupid that would incur the outlaws’ wrath.

I found the opening act, concerning the conflict and love triangle between neighbors, fairly uninvolving.  Thankfully, Burl Ives and his outlaws enter the picture around the twenty minute mark, and the final two acts of the story are edge-of-your-seat suspenseful.  The strengths of the later two-thirds of the film more than make up for the shortcomings of the intro, so you’ll be rewarded if you are patient.  Fans of film noir will be doubly rewarded, because with its dark storyline and black & white cinematography, Day of the Outlaw is the most noirish of Westerns.

Andre De Toth was an old hand at Westerns by the time he got around to his final horse opera, Day of the Outlaw.  He had previously written the story to the Gregory Peck classic The Gunfighter (1950) and had directed numerous cowboy programmers, most starring Randolph Scott.  That experience is evident in every frame of Day of the Outlaw.  The picture is expertly staged, including many long takes that build tension (the use of a long tracking shot, following a rolling bottle, has a payoff that is especially memorable).  The outdoor scenes, shot on location in Oregon, are also brutally effective in their frigid realism.

A warning — Regarding the outdoor scenes, it should be noted that some viewers that are very sensitive regarding the treatment of animals may have an issue with some of them.  While it served the story, I personally had some difficulty watching the horses struggling to wade through deep snowdrifts, while their riders flogged them to keep moving.

Getting back to the superlatives, the acting is top notch.  Robert Ryan and Burl Ives never gave a bad performance, but they are especially good here, playing some particularly dark notes.  Ozzie and Harriet’s David Nelson is also quite effective as the conflicted, youngest member of the band of outlaws.  Familiar character faces, including Dabbs Greer, Elisha Cook Jr., and Jack Lambert add color to the proceedings.  And while Tina Louise does seem a bit out of place in a Western setting, she holds her own against the more seasoned cast.

While it takes a little time getting into gear, Day of the Outlaw is a superlative “snow Western.”  It is also a very suspenseful noirish thriller.  If you like any of the genres mentioned, you may want to give the new Blu-ray release of Day of the Outlaw a spin.

US/B&W-92m./Dir: Andre De Toth/Wr: Philip Yordan (based the novel by Lee E. Wells)/Cast: Robert Ryan, Burl Ives, Tina Louise, Alan Marshal, Venetia Stevenson, David Nelson, Nehemiah Persoff, Jack Lambert, Frank DeKova, Lance Fuller, Elisha Cook Jr., Dabbs Greer

For Fans of: If you love the adult Westerns of Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, Day of the Outlaw will likely be in your wheelhouse.

Video: Kino Lorber Studio Classics recently released Day of the Outlaw (1959) on Blu-ray.  While there is no mention or evidence of a new transfer, the black & white widescreen image is sharp, free of scratches and debris, and it displays natural film grain.

The disc also includes the following special features:

• An excellent new audio commentary by film historian Jeremy Arnold, which increases the viewer’s appreciation of the film, through discussion of the cinematography and directorial choices, as well as coverage of the careers of Robert Ryan and Andre De Toth.
• The original theatrical trailer for Day of the Outlaw, along with trailers for Kino Lorber’s Western releases of The Indian Fighter, Man of the West, Man with the Gun, and The Big Country.
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature

Streaming: At the time of this review, Day of the Outlaw was not streaming through any of the major subscription services.

More to Explore: If you’re looking for an even more depressing “snow Western,” you can’t get more downbeat than Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (1968).  It is the most sour of all of the Spaghetti Westerns.

Trivia: Andre De Toth had the town sets built in Oregon several months before filming, so they would weather naturally, rather than being aged artificially by the set decorators.  When he discovered that the sets weren’t built on his precise compass points, he had them all pulled down and rebuilt.

For More Info: If you are interested in more information about director Andre De Toth, I suggest his autobiography, Fragments: Portraits from the Inside.  There are also a couple of good books on Robert Ryan — Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography by Franklin Jarlett and The Lives of Robert Ryan (Wesleyan Film) by J.R. Jones.