Best movie of this year hands down!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The 1860s "Rawhide" Station falls between the San Francisco to St. Louis stagecoach route. Working there, handsome hired hand Tyrone Power (as Tom Owens) has his hands full when asked to detain beautiful Susan Hayward (as Vinnie Holt). Travelling with a toddler, Ms. Hayward is ordered to stay at the station because a dangerous criminal has made a break, just before he's scheduled for hanging. Folks think he'll target the coach, looking for a fortune in gold. They're correct, but heartless bandit Hugh Marlowe (as Rafe Zimmerman) starts at the relay station. After creepy henchman Jack Elam (as Tevis) pumps Mr. Power's boss Edgar Buchanan (as Sam Todd) full of lead, Mr. Marlow and his gang take over the "Rawhide" station...This western is marvelously photographed, in beautiful black and white, by Milton Krasner and is very skillfully directed by Henry Hathaway. Hallways, doorways and open spaces look especially artful. Powell is intentionally introduced shirtless, but the 1950s was not as revealing for leading women; Hayward is costumed in cleavage, instead. Both very attractive, Powell and Hayward have eyelashes that are made for each other. The gang led by Mr. Marlowe is wickedly perfect, with Dean Jagger (as Yancy) and George Tobias (as Gratz) rounding out the quartet. Getting to play a trigger-happy rapist, Mr. Elam gets the most villainous role. Elam viciously steals the movie, blazing through a bricked doorway to an exciting outdoors shoot-out.******** Rawhide (3/7/51) Henry Hathaway ~ Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Hugh Marlowe, Jack Elam

Rawhide is directed by Henry Hathaway and written by Dudley Nichols. It stars Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Hugh Marlowe, Jack Elam, George Tobias, Dean Jagger and Edgar Buchanan. Music is by Sol Kaplan and Lionel Newman and cinematography by Milton Krasner. A stagecoach station employee and a stranded woman traveller and her baby niece find themselves held hostage by four escaped convicts intending to rob the next day's gold shipment. A Western remake of 1935 crime film Show Them No Mercy, Rawhide is the embodiment of a solid Western production. Beautifully photographed in black and white by Krasner, smoothly performed by a strong cast of actors and seamlessly directed by the astute Hathaway, it builds the hostage plot slowly, tightening the screws of character development a bit at a time, and it unfolds in a blaze of glory come film's end. Characterisations are always interesting, if a bit conventional to anyone who has watched a lot of Oaters. Power is of course our hero in waiting and Hayward is spunky and feisty, I wonder if they will get together romantically? The four convicts are your typical scuzzy types, with Marlowe dominating the screen as the intelligent leader saddled with cohorts he really doesn't care for, while Elam is wonderfully vile as a lecherous loose cannon. The thematics of greed, sexual hostility and jeopardy for Hayward and child keep the pot boiling nicely, so suspense is a constant, and some thought has gone into the writing as regards the convict group dynamic. Sadly Kaplan's musical score is quite often cheese laden, even ridiculously jolly and not at one with the noirish thriller conventions of the story. But regardless of irritating musical interludes, this is a very good Oater and comfortably recommended to Western fans who want more than your standard shoot em' up B pictures. 7.5/10

To me 'Rawhide' is one grossly underrated little western, just as enjoyable in it's own way as 'High Noon', 'Shane' or other classics of the period! A taut little film, wonderfully directed and filmed in the picturesque Alabama Mountains at Lone Pine, California. A top notch cast headed by screen legend Tyrone Power, proving once again what a fine actor he was, and never looking more devastatingly handsome, than in this film! Susan Hayward gives a spirited performance as the former river boat entertainer, and manages to look pretty as a picture at all times! Hugh Marlowe, normally quite a wooden actor, is surprisingly effective as the leader of the outlaw gang! Star turns by veteran character actors Edgar Buchanan, Dean Jagger and George Tobias, with a powerhouse debut by Jack Elam at his evil best, round out a perfect cast! If your a western fan, or, just like a good suspenseful drama, do yourself a favor, and don't miss this film! Now on DVD, and looking good!

More suggestive of such dark western films of the late 1940s as Pursued, than romantic brawlers by Hathaway like North To Alaska etc, this film is taut and suspenseful, well-acted and shot - just as one might expect from one of the great Hollywood studio professionals. In hindsight, it is obvious that the origins of Rawhide can be found in the director's earlier career, when he was involved with the noir cycle. After helming such classics as Kiss Of Death, and Call Northside 777, only a few short years before, it was natural for Hathaway to bring something of the same sensibility to an oater.Rawhide is scripted by Dudley Nichols who worked for John Ford among others, over a prestigious writing career. The story is a relatively simple one: a junior way station employee Tom Owens (Tyrone Power), and a woman Vinnie Holt (Susan Hayward), with her sister's child, are held captive by a small band of prison-escapees who are waiting to rob a gold shipment. Playing husband and wife to maximise their survival chances, Owens and Holt have to find a way to escape the vigilant and murderous ringleader Zimmerman (Hugh Marlowe) as well as warn the approaching stage. Further down the cast list there is also a splendidly evil part for Jack Elam as the deadly and lascivious Tevis, with eyes on Holt.Interestingly, the main action of the film is book-ended by a jaunty narrator, putting events into an historical context. This is a tale taken from the annals of the 'Jackass Mail', we are assured, a famous postal service which defied sceptics of the time to triumphantly link San Francisco and Saint Louis. But then the story shifts abruptly, to just a few people in the middle of nowhere, one of whom (Owens) has even yet to learn the business properly.After this step change, as trumpeted, 'Jackass Mail' appears just so much romantic hyperbole. It's the events at the way station which come to dramatise actual truths about convincing characters, even if they are often at a loss to control events. The irony is that, due to Nichols' skills as a dramatist and fine performances, we end up likely viewing the alleged history behind events as so much Hollywood window dressing, while the predations of the Zimmerman gang seem by far the more vivid and realistic. The 'real history' of sorts is displaced.As already mentioned, Hathaway's movie recalls the director's assignments earlier in his career. But Rawhide was also a modern, and for its time, relatively adult western attempting rounded characterisation. In a dramatic scheme familiar to the genre, character concerns regularly develop indoors while critical physical action is reserved for the open air. It's a film in which room-space in general, and doors in particular, play an important part. Players are confined within rooms, are repeatedly framed through, or walk back and forth, even die, in doorways; they spark off among themselves in a side room or the communal living area, while outside they rarely stray far.Once the Zimmerman gang arrive claustrophobia increases - a feeling helped by a sense that each room is really three-dimensional, closed in with a ceiling (reinforced by one noteworthy Citizen Kane-ish shot near the beginning). Doors and walls are uniformly sturdy, due to a fine location choice, in part of a real building. This way station offers an increasingly prison-like atmosphere - coming to a head as Owens and Holt ultimately attempt to tunnel out through the wall. In some senses, of course, the station is a penitentiary for everyone: whether for the Zimmerman gang, who have merely transferred their former penal relationships into a different setting or Vinnie Holt, wrongly condemned as an unmarried mother travelling with child to escape society's sanction, or Owens - whose restrictions means he cannot easily warn the approaching gold stage.The most interesting character in Rawhide is that of Vinnie Holt - stranded, with child, through company regulation. In a genre where women-kind are too often divided into contrasting or opposing stereotypes, of nice girl/ whore, bar girl/ respectable wife, and so on, Holt is more rounded, less dependent on the approval of others in general, and men in particular. A woman who is at first wrongly assumed to be of dubious virtue, lusted after by Tevis, and distrusted by Zimmerman, she is jealously protective of her sister's child, to the extent of being less bothered by other issues. Even before her true history is known, she gains the audience's respect through this single-minded independence, respect eventually matched by that of her temporary 'husband' Owens. Eventually she and he end up as a team for the mutual benefit of both, not coming together through easy romantic attachment. One feels it is a stronger bond and, given the nature of frontier life, a more likely one. Hayward's rare appearance in a western can be judged a success.The bond which grows between Owens and Holt, based on mutual respect, is in contrast to that connecting the Zimmerman gang. United by a dubious common background, the need to escape, greed, and respect enforced by fear, it is a union which is doomed to sunder. Zimmerman himself is allegedly unable to trust women (and in fact has been sentenced for killing one) after a tortured personal history. As Tevis says to him: "I ain't been cured of women... ain't had your medicine yet, Jim" - recognising that Zimmerman is unlikely to ever form a proper relationship with the wider world and implying that female-kind is some sort of sickness. Tevis himself has a brutal, leering fixation on the fairer sex, another direct contrast to Owens' basic decency and moral strength. Out of Zimmerman's confederates, only Yancy (Dean Jagger) has any strong humanity. It is a trait which, appositely enough; means he will survive.