Red Canyon. 1949. USA. Directed by George Sherman. Screenplay by Maurice Geraghty, based on the novel Wildfire by Zane Grey. With Ann Blyth, Howard Duff, George Brent, Edgar Buchanan, John McIntire, Chill Wills, Lloyd Bridges. DCP. 82 min.
The wild stallion Black Velvet, who runs a pack across the Utah canyon country, is the film’s real center, and director George Sherman knew it. The footage of the horse in motion, a loose and powerful presence across the Kanab locations, is where Red Canyon comes fully alive. Sherman’s visual approach to the Western landscape is almost unique in the genre. The horizon lines made famous by John Ford barely appear, as Sherman stages the action in great gulleys and canyons, the walk rising like a cathedral around the characters. Ann Blyth, 19 and top-billed in her first and only Western, was an unusual choice for the tomboyish Lucy Bostel, and the fit isn’t seamless. Howard Duff, as the reformed outlaw trying to break the horse—and the cycle of his family’s violence—plays in a quieter register that suits the landscape better.
The supporting cast does what Universal-International’s supporting casts reliably did: Edgar Buchanan provides comic weight, Chill Wills plays the marshal with practiced efficiency, and John McIntire, then in just his third Western, is Floyd Cordt, rascally outlaw patriarch to Duff’s Lin Sloane—a relationship built on bad blood and an age gap smaller than the casting implies. Lloyd Bridges, as Cordt’s wilder son, brings the cruelty the story needs. Some of the Black Velvet footage was recycled by Universal in Cattle Drive (1951) and Black Horse Canyon (1954), a practical acknowledgment that Sherman had captured something extraordinary.