Straight Shooting (Silent) (DVD)

When farmers encroach on the Western plains used by cattlemen and their herds, land baron Thunder Flint begins a cold-blooded campaign to drive them out. He hires gunman Cheyenne Harry to force the Sims family off their farm. Cheyenne arrives at the Sims' home just as family members are burying their young son, a casualty of the range war. The gunslinger is moved to tears at this tragic sight and becomes a changed man. He renounces his mercenary past and puts his gun at the farmers' disposal in the ongoing range war.

As a motion picture, Straight Shooting rides historically tall in the saddle: It was the first feature Western in the fabled directing career of John Ford (Stagecoach, Fort Apache, The Searchers, dozens more). It was also Harry Carey's first appearance as reformed bandit Cheyenne Harry, a character he occasionally reprised right through the 1930s. Despite its antiquity, Straight Shooting features recognizably "Fordian" touches, both photographically and story-wise, and builds to an exciting finale: Cheyenne learns that a small army of ranchers is about to descend upon the farmers, so he recruits the help of scores of his outlaw saddlemates and proceeds to fight killers WITH killers! --Tom Weaver

BONUS: The Four-Gun Bandit (1919)

(***Due to the rarity of these films, picture anomalies exist)

• western