The picture opens well, with outlaw Choya (Ladd) surrounded and holed up in a general store with a hostage. He escapes, barely, and eventually teams up with shady character T. Jefferson Leffingwell (Robert Keith) and his partner, Tattoo (John Berkes). Leffingwell proposes an ingenious, cruel deception. Tattoo tattoos a strange design on Choya's shoulder, and soon after Leffingwell shoots the skin artist in cold blood. (The gunfire blows Tattoo right off his horse, a shockingly graphic effect for a film from this period, one that anticipates the raised level of violence in Shane.)

Choya then turns up at the Bar O-M Ranch, where foreman Ransom (Tom Tully) is reluctant to hire the obvious gunslinger, but the rancher's daughter, Ruth Lavery (Mona Freeman), takes a shine to Choya and helps him get hired. He's attracted to her as well, but then does everything possible to piss off her millionaire rancher father (Charles Bickford), eventually provoking a knock-down, drag-out fight. This, however, turns out to be a ruse: during the scuffle, Choya makes certain that old man Lavery sees the tattoo, which he immediately mistakes for the birthmark of his long lost son, kidnapped 25 years before and never found. After conferring with daughter Ruth and Mrs. Lavery (Selena Royle, also the mother in Robot Monster!), and further questioning Choya, carefully rehearsed by Leffingwell to feed the family the answers they want to hear, the Laverys are utterly convinced their son has at last come home.

From here, the film moves in unexpected ways that this reviewer dare not reveal. Suffice to say that outlaw Choya becomes increasingly uncomfortable living his lie, receiving the parental love and trust that he himself was denied, but of which he is not entitled to here. The parents so miss their son, even a quarter century since his disappearance, that they are easily fooled by Choya, making his act seem all the more despicable. Ladd is extremely good in these scenes and as Choya stands ready to inherit a cattle empire, his emotional struggle genuinely reaches that much overused term, but one appropriate here: Shakespearean heights.

(Minor Spoilers) Amidst all this, Leffingwell turns up at the ranch, wanting to claim his half of the fortune, and not wanting to wait around a few decades until Lavery dies a natural death. The possible fate of the Lavery boy is learned, and this too sends the picture off in unexpected directions.

All told, Branded works on almost every level from its somewhat unusual story (adapted from Evan Evans/Max Brand's novel Montana Rides) and uniformly fine cast (especially Keith, a truly unpleasant, morally bankrupt character) to cinematographer-turned-director Rudolph Mate's visually sumptuous compositions.

It's the story though that distinguishes Branded, and its telling is intelligent and suspenseful. Instead of letting the audience in on Leffingwell's plan, screenwriters Cyril Hume and Sidney Boehm wisely choose to let them discover it as their plot unfolds. And just as the picture seems to be heading toward one conclusion, the script takes an abrupt and surprising turn in another direction. Perhaps the only disappointment is the story's insistence on an ultimately unneeded romantic attraction between Choya and Ruth to partly drive the plot.

Video & Audio

Presented in its original full frame format, Branded looks resplendent in a transfer that really makes its three-strip Technicolor photography pop off the screen. The bare bones disc has no Extra Features, no alternate audio and only optional English subtitles, but the transfer is a knock-out, despite some minor age-related wear here and there. The mono sound is clean and clear.

Parting Thoughts

Though not quite up to the level of the best Westerns, Branded nonetheless is much underrated and a pleasant discovery.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.