Enter your house justified

This was Sam Peckinpah's second feature film and arguably his best Western; yes, better than the overrated "Wild Bunch" IMHO. While it lacks that movie's slow-motion ultra-violence, it has a superior story and more interesting characters.

The conflict between puritanical religion and purity of purpose is spotlighted with Elsa's curmudgeonly father representing the former and Judd (Joel McCrea) the latter.

Yet there's so much more, like the five redneck brothers from hell at the wild mining camp, not to mention Mariette Hartley (Elsa) in her debut. The movie's short at 94 minutes, but seems longer (in a good way) because it's so dense with gems to mine, like Elsa's brief discussion with Judd:

ELSA: "My father says there's only right and wrong, good and evil; nothing in between. It isn't that simple, is it?"

JUDD: "No, it isn't. It should be, but it isn't."

Elsa flees the stifling clutches of her legalistic father to marry some young buck at the hedonistic frontier camp. She's swings on the pendulum from legalism to libertinism, which is the opposite extreme, but they're actually two sides of the same bad coin. Judd represents the sound middle path of wisdom. Everyone near him recognizes this and is positively influenced by him, one way or another, even his old wayward friend (Randolph Scott). Kudos to the genius of writer N.B. Stone Jr.

Both Scott and McCrea retired from acting after this winner, although the latter decided to return several years later. Some say "Ride the High Country" represents the non-official end of the traditional Western and the beginning of the new.

It was shot in Inyo National Forest, Malibu Creek State Park, Merrimac & Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park, California.