Buck Gordon (Buck Jones) is the sheriff of a small town, and he works exceptionally hard to maintain the peace. Most of the residents adhere to his strict but understandable rules, and there is very little trouble. However, a recent event has come to the sheriff’s attention, whereby two local landowners, Turner (Will Walling) and Walton (Edward LeSaint) have been engaged in a vicious feud over land ownership, with their dispute being based on the fact that one believes that the “open range” policy should continue to be employed, whereby his cattle may graze wherever he deems fit, while the other believes wholeheartedly in private land ownership. This is only worsened by the fact that the two feuding ranchers’ children, Clint (John Wayne) and Judy (Susan Fleming) are engaged in a passionate love affair, much to the chagrin of their fathers, who view them as nothing but enemies that they are seeking to destroy. When violence begins to rise, and one of the landowners is brutally murdered, Buck has to take matters into his own hands, which means making some quick decisions before more harm can come to the town’s occupants, who are growing restless with the unease that is afflicting their normally tranquil hamlet.

Unlike many genres, which tend to influence each other over time, the western has tended to be very clearly separated into a variety of eras and movements, each one standing independent of each other. Whether united by the era in which they were made, or the conventions they followed, a solid western always stays quite close to a particular sub-category. One of these that has been rarely explored with the same intensity as others is the Pre-Code western, a category that bred some of the most impressive, but still sadly undervalued, entries into the genre. A figure at the forefront of this period in western filmmaking was Buck Jones, one of the first superstars of the genre, and someone who proved that one could easily make a career out of playing essentially the same character. The Range Feud, which was made when the actor was arguably at his peak (although going on two decades in the industry, he was already something of a veteran), is an exceptional film, a wonderfully entertaining work that manages to tell a truly compelling story despite both time and budgetary constraints, as well as having an intellectual quality that only really factored into the tenets of the genre’s filmmaking conventions during the era of revisionist westerns, where the emphasis was placed on smartly-written, subversive stories that looked beyond the capitalistic ideologies of the American Dream, and instead focused on something far more enduring and interesting. The Range Feud is a marvel of a film – how it manages to be so enjoyable and riveting while having a smartness to both its concept and the execution, is absolutely bewildering, but only proves how the Pre-Code era harnessed some of the best work of the early years in the Golden Age of Hollywood, a fact that becomes increasingly clear with each new discovery that takes us further into this era.

The Range Feud is a very peculiar film – no one will deny that this is a fully-formed western, meeting all the conventions and having a very rough, rambling sensibility that has essentially defined the genre. However, for every traditional trope we find, there is another unique departure that demonstrates how different it actually is. Far more cerebral than your average, garden-variety western produced during this period, the film is written with an intelligence that some may consider to have been wasted on such a derivative story. However, this very unique approach is what makes The Range Feud so incredibly compelling, since it sets it apart from many later films that were inspired by this period in the genre’s history. We tend to see westerns with very simple concepts compensate for their limitations by trying to make them into broad, elaborate adventures that enthral, but leave the mind as fast as they appeared. The Land Feud does it slightly differently, going in the converse direction – it takes a very simple story, and executes it with a complex, layered approach to the filmmaking process. The director of the film, D. Ross Lederman had a keen eye for what works cinematically, and he employs it without any difficulty, finding the nuance in a genre that isn’t known for subtletly, at least not at this particular moment. Credit must also go to screenwriters Milton Krims and George H. Plympton, who make it clear that every opportunity to do something different is essential. Taking what was supposed to be a star vehicle for a popular star, and turning it into arguably one of the most insightful westerns of its era, was not an easy task, but they manage to do so without much difficulty.

Brimming with energy, but told with a genuine gravitas that allows us to forget how utterly predictable the film is, Lederman somehow manages to convince us to suspend all disbelief merely through strong writing that hints at the inspiration for this film being far more than just archaic tales of the Wild West, but a range of other genres, which are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the film, present enough to set this film apart from many others, but not too obvious to be distracting and take away from the existing charms. By the nature of the premise, one would easily associate The Range Feud more with gangster films at the time, with shadowy figures conspiring against their fellow citizen, especially over territory, carries clear associations to the underground dealings of mobs of violent criminals who sought to assert dominance over their chosen turf. Moreover, the film blurs the boundaries between heroes and villains – no one in this film (other than Jones’ principled sheriff, who eventually becomes a secondary character in his own starring vehicle, a bold but worthwhile choice that demonstrated an unexpected departure of vanity for the actor) is necessarily good or evil, but are instead just trying to make their own way in the world, doing whatever they feel is necessary to survive. The Range Feud was an early starring role for an enviably youthful John Wayne, who proved to be quite a formidable antagonist in one of the few instances where he wasn’t the hero of the story, and even his own performance hints at the decision to do more with these individuals than just have them exist as thinly-composed stock characters that exist simply for the sake of filling in the gaps from a script.

The Range Feud is a bewilderingly obscure film, since the only times it is ever mentioned (if at all), is in conversations about Jones, who isn’t as dominant a force in the contemporary cinematic discourse as he was before, or for those remarking on the early work of John Wayne. However, there is nearly nothing about this film that disqualifies it from being a masterpiece. It has a pair of very charismatic lead performances, a strong script that is perhaps too good for this kind of low-budget western, and a sense of humour that never goes to waste. However, where the film succeeds the most is in its striking approach to the narrative, which it executes with such precision and intelligence, we’re taken aback by how complex it manages to be, without becoming convoluted or overwrought. This is a hidden gem if there ever was one, and clocking in at less than an hour, this is a film that is worth the time of many people – whether you’re a fan of westerns, a Wayne completionist, or someone looking to break into this era of the genre’s existence, you can’t go wrong with The Range Feud, an absolutely essential film that deserves a much wider audience, and a reputation far more notable than it has already.