By John M. Whalen

“Robber’s Roost” (1955), a colorful western filmed in Durango, Mexico with George Montgomery, and a host of other familiar faces from the fifties, was a movie a decade ahead of its time. Based on a Zane Grey novel, it tells the story of a mysterious stranger known only as “Tex” (Montgomery) who rides into the town of Junta Grande, and joins one of two gangs working for crippled rancher “Bull” Herrick (Bruce Bennett). Hank Hays (Richard Boone) is the leader of one gang, and Heeseman (Peter Graves) heads up the other. Herrick believes the best way to protect his herd of 6,000 cattle from rustlers is to hire the two rival gangs to keep an eye on each other. “There’s an old saying,” he says. “Set a thief to catch a thief.” Well, that sensible adage proves to be unworkable here. Who in his right mind would hire a bunch of cattle thieves to guard his herd? It’s explained that Bull injured his spine when his horse rolled over on him and put him in a wheelchair. Maybe they left out the part where he suffered some brain damage as well.

Nevertheless, Herrick hires Tex as part of Hays’ outfit, but somehow this tall stranger with two six-guns and an extra-wide brim hat doesn’t really seem to fit in. For one thing, he asks too many questions. He’s especially interested in the “Circle K” brand on the horses Hays and his men are riding. Herrick’s sister Helen (Sylvia Findley) arrives from back East to provide some love interest in a film overcrowded with male actors and tries to convince Bull to sell the ranch and get his spinal injury tended to. Bull, who got his nickname by being bull-headed, tells her he won’t leave until he gets his cattle to market. Add to this mix Robert Bell (William Hopper) a wealthy rancher who wants to marry Helen and you’ve got the full cast of characters. And a full cast it is, indeed, with anywhere from six to a dozen characters on screen in most of the scenes. Director Sydney Salkow must have needed a traffic director to keep them from bumping into each other.

But it’s the constant butting of heads between two gangs that hate each other, as they wait for the chance to double cross Herrick and steal his cattle, and the mystery surrounding Tex and what he’s doing in the middle of all this, that makes “Robber’s Roost”, in its own weird and unusual way, rather interesting to watch. One of the more bizarre aspects is the character played by Richard Boone, who is good as usual playing a hard case. But for some odd reason he keeps curling his lip up over his front teeth as if he were sucking on a lemon. Hard to know if he had just been fitted with a bad set of caps or he thought he had to keep snarling to look tough. Fortunately for him and us it is a distracting mannerism that he never repeated throughout the rest of his career.

As the film progresses we learn, of course, that Tex isn’t an outlaw like all the others, despite a wanted poster that Helen discovers, but has tracked Hays and his gang to Junta Grande in pursuit of the unknown men who raped and killed his wife. With so many bad guys, and Helen thinking he’s one of the baddies, Tex has his hands full trying to bring them to justice and save “Bull” Herrick’s herd, especially after Hays and Heeseman finally realize their best course is to stop fighting each other, steal the whole herd and split the profits. Golly! I guess Bull never thought that would happen. The final climax takes place in the mountains of Durango, complete with a lookout post that features a boulder balanced on a rocky spire, which I suppose must be the titular Robber’s roost.

Despite the oddball touches and the somewhat implausible plot, “Robbers Roost” is fun to watch. And, as noted at the beginning of this review, there are two things that make this movie prophetically ahead of its time. One is Herrick’s idea of pitting two rival gangs against each other to serve his own purposes. It’s more like a plot from a gangster movie and I can’t think of any westerns up until then that have a similar story line. However, nine years later Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars,” (1964) would serve up the same idea although in a slightly different and more believable way. Of course, “Dollars” is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” which was supposedly inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest.” Zane Grey wrote “Robbers Roost” in 1932, three years after “Red Harvest” was published. Perhaps “Robber’s Roost” can be counted as one more film ultimately inspired by Hammett, who knows?

The other thing that sets “Robbers Roost” apart from the films of it time is the fact that except for Tex, Herrick and his daughter, just about all the main characters, especially Hays and Heeseman are really bad men. They cheat, steal and kill without qualm. They would have been right at home in a Leone or Peckinpah film, but they were far from the usual black and white hats that populated westerns in 1955.

In addition to an unusual story line, “Robber’s Roost” benefits by having been filmed on location in Durango, Mexico. As usual in a Zane Grey story, the landscape is as important an element as the characters. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray transfer presents the 1.85:1 theatrical print in good condition, with vibrant color and impressive detail, giving the rugged Mexican mountains landscape real depth and beauty. The film shows some signs of wear and tear and the original mono soundtrack is a bit on the rough side. But somehow, it gives the movie a rugged authenticity.

Kino Lorber Studio Classics deserves kudos for presenting films like “Robbers Roost” in high definition, giving modern day viewers a chance to see them the way they were originally seen in neighborhood theaters. It’s far from being a classic western on the order of “Shane” or “The Wild Bunch,” but viewed as a film spanning the transition from the standard western fare of the mid-fifties to the “adult” westerns of the sixties, it’s certainly worth catching. And you don’t want to miss Boone’s final dying words, as he sucks on his front teeth and makes a clean breast of everything, including killing Tex’s wife. “I’m not trying to horn in with the almighty,” he says. “I just want an edge when they line up for the last showdown.”

What more is there to say after that?

Kino Lorber Studio Classics presents “Robber’s Roost” with no frills, although there are previews for three other Blu-rays including “The Gunfight at Dodge City” with Joel McCrea.

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(John M. Whalen's latest book is "The Big Shutdown". Click here to view promotional trailer. Click here to order from Amazon.)