Movies for Monday: "The Naked Spur" (1953)

For this week's edition of Movies for Monday, head on over to Gary Dobbs' blog The Tainted Archive where I had the honor of being a guest blogger. In anticipation of the June 1st Wild West Monday the Third, I wrote about Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur (1953), which stars James Stewart as a bounty hunter on the trail of wanted outlaw Robert Ryan. A psychological Western shot on-location in the Colorado Rockies in glorious Technicolor, the film also stars Ralph Meeker and Millard Mitchell as Stewart's cohorts and Janet Leigh as Ryan's young girlfriend. Even under the magnificent expanse of the Western sky, the film still has all the claustrophobic tension you'd expect from one of Mann's noir films as greed slowly tears the group apart and tests the loyalty of everyone involved.

The original theatrical trailer is available to watch online at The Internet Movie Database.

Click here to read my review of The Naked Spur.