Ostensibly, the young man eventually named Cooncat is cornered on an isolated ranch one night and is suspected of murder. But is he turned over to the law? No! Instead, after being dragged behind a horse to make him see sense, he is kept on as a ranch hand, where Lois Butler falls in love with him.
Mix in an old family feud; a soon-to-be-married Kristine Miller; the ranch patriarch who insists on finding out the “truth” about Cooncat; Chill Wills (Bixby in The Biggest Game in the West) as the folksy cook who serves to explicate the plot--such as it is; and two ghostly apparitions, one of whom is played by Jack Elam (Boot Coby in Bad Night in Big Butte) who are more real to Cooncat than anyone else, and well, it’s no surprise that some viewers of High Lonesome might be confused.
The poor quality of the DVD can’t help make up for being filmed on location near Marfa, Texas — there were many times when dirt was evident on the print and when the sound was almost inaudible. Fortunately, the movie was only 80 minutes long. It’s pretty hard to believe that Alan LeMay, credited as the writer and director of High Lonesome, was also the writer of The Searchers and The Unforgiven (the Audrey Hepburn version).
The best part of High Lonesome was actually one of the bonus features. In addition to text-only bios of the major stars and director, there was a full-length half-hour episode of Stories of the Century, which was a mid-1950s TV show about a railroad detective and his female partner hunting down outlaws of the Old West. The episode on this DVD was from Season 1, #20, called The Wild Bunch of Wyoming, which makes for a nice tie-in to ASJ. Although not exactly historically true, the episode itself was fun to watch.
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