Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.
I thought I was done with Westerns until I discovered that Silver Lode was still on the list. As far as I know, this is the final Western film that I’m told I have to watch before I expire, and I think that’s probably a good thing. I don’t dislike Westerns, but I do get tired of them. Certainly there are some in the genre that are a little different or that go to interesting places, or that are Western only in setting, but this is a genre that gets stuck in the same loop more than most others.
That’s very much the case with Silver Lode, a film that was done a lot better a few years earlier when it was called High Noon. It’s not a direct rip-off, but there are enough similarities here that I can’t imagine that director Allan Dwan wasn’t influenced in many ways by the superior film. Only the details are different. In the first film, a highly-respected member of the town is called out on the day of his wedding by an old enemy and the townspeople refuse to help him. In Silver Lode, a highly-respected member of the town is arrested on his wedding day on a fake charge by an old enemy and the townspeople slowly turn against their former friend.
