Sierra

• Directed by Alfred E. Green
• June 1, 1950
• Based on the 1937 novel The Mountains Are My Kingdom by Stuart Hardy

A female frontier lawyer finds an outlaw and his son hiding in the wilderness from a false murder charge.

Audie Murphy plays the mysterious stranger Ring Hassard living an isolated and secretive life in the mountains with his dad Jeff (Dean Jagger) and no other people. That alone is weird. Ring falls for Riley Martin (Murphy’s then wife Wanda Hendrix) who is in the area looking for a guy named Lonesome (Burl Ives) who holds the answer to a local mystery involving wild horses. Riley would appear to be the first woman Ring ever met. That makes the attraction creepy.

Jeff has been wanted for years over a murder accusation that given the era he is clearly innocent of. When he is injured, Ring goes to town for help and does so in the dumbest way possible creating issues for himself forcing him to be defended in court by Riley. Come to think of it I do not see Riley do much ‘lawyer stuff’ when the action moves to a courtroom. No legal sounding jargon. That gets handled by the men folk.

Riley and Ring are supposed to be a romantic couple, but it never feels romantic. She just kinda took pity on him like one would a lost puppy. She is much more interested in the local horse mystery than generating screen chemistry with her co-star and (then) husband. Reminds me a touch of the Oh Sherrie video with Steve Perry and his girlfriend who broke up shortly afterward. Murphy and Hendrix eventually divorced.

I just have no idea where Ring came from. His father Jeff never gets connected to a woman. Jeff ran up into the hills to hide from the law because he had been framed for the crime of murder. Just one line to explain why there’s no mom. She ran up there with both. Died in childbirth. SOMETHING!

There is an effective use of mat paintings to hide the general background and make the filming environment look more rustic and uninhabited. I didn’t notice them at first and it’s hard to tell because director Alfred E. Green kept the camera on those moments briefly. I was clued in when one shot lingered a bit too long.

The key to solving all the problems in this movie is proving Jeff was innocent of murdering his partner. Ring comes off as weirdly adverse to that even though he believes in his father. Not because he will benefit by keeping the locals believing Jeff is guilty. He just doesn’t trust the world to the point of being pathological with his mistrust.

I hate that this movie engages in the grievous sin of night filter. I bring this up just about every time. Film at dusk or rewrite the scene for daylight or get some appropriate lighting for the dark. At the time this movie was made there were any number of TV Westerns in production and I’m sure you the production could have borrowed some stage time on a standing set. It’s a much better option than night filter.

The songs performed by Ives are an ill fit for the film. It makes you feel more like Sierra is a showcase for Burl Ives and his music than it does a Western mystery or even an action fueled Western starring Audie Murphy. They are not bad songs. It’s just more like Ives goes “I’ve got a song. Like to hear it? Here it goes!”

Another thing that sticks in my craw is Sheriff Knudson (Roy Roberts) is all about following the law and evidence. Conversely everything in this movie gets cleared up when the truth about who the real murderer was comes out in essentially a deathbed confession by the real murderer. There is certainly some circumstantial evidence such as the chest burns to indicate he was at least present at the fire, but I don’t think even then in a court of law the deathbed confession would be admissible.

You often forget that Ring was labeled a horse thief and that’s why everybody is out to hang him. It just seems to get ignored amongst the anger displayed by the cast. I’m also confused why Jeff decided to hang out in the hills all that time rather than get out of the area. People assumed he was dead since he had been unseen for that long. Then there is the girl looking for the wild horses that nobody in the area has ever seen. They think they’re strays, but as I understand she has seen them but because she’s a woman nobody believes her? And if she’s found them once how come she can’t find them again?

I enjoyed myself but Sierra had problems that couldn’t be completely overcome. From Burl Ives’s musical interludes to things that just were forced rather than natural, it just doesn’t work completely. Entertaining but probably one of the rare Audie Murphy Westerns I won’t revisit for quite some time if at all.