Wise Western Watch: Blood On The Moon (1948)

Watched:  02/20/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

Blood On The Moon (1948) is much more of what I expect from Robert Wise as a director than our last watch - Mystery in Mexico.  

Here, Wise is directing a cast led by Robert Mitchum, with Robert Preston, Barbara Bel Geddes, Walter Brennan, Phyllis Thaxter, Tom Tully, Charles McGraw, and a host of actors you've seen in other films.

Mitchum plays a failed rancher from Texas who heads to Utah for a job offered by his buddy Robert Preston - and it seems that job is acting as a hired gun in a cold range war.  Preston has teamed with other homesteaders against big-time rancher Lufton (Tom Tully) and he's trying to screw Lufton out of his range and cattle.

It's kind of wild as I don't know if I've seen the homesteaders cast in this light before - usually it's one of the big-money ranchers bumping off homesteaders (see: Shane).  And there's certainly the idea presented the rancher has been hassling these people.

And that's part of where the moral ambiguity of the situation settles in.  Preston is up to shady business including woo'ing Lufton's daughter played by Phyllis Thaxter and manipulating things behind the scenes.  The small homesteaders he's teamed with have a legit complaint, but he's basically manipulating them, too, and it leads to the death of Brennan's son.  

Bel Geddes plays the spitfire daughter of Lufton, who wears pants and will shoot at you.  She, of course, is on a collision course with Mitchum from the first few minutes of the movie, and we have to make her want to start wearing dresses after she meets him (sigh).

That said, this feels like Western Noir.  Everyone who knows what's happening is a bit morally gray, and/or compromised, and the innocents are just not keeping up with current events.  Mitchum is an ideal lead here - bringing his "this is not what I signed up for" swagger and is just more or less cool as hell.  

When he really grasps how far Preston will go, he's out of there, after saving Lufton's skin.  And things get pretty violent.

It's a very watchable movie.  Big stars, solid story, action.  Certainly worth a repeat viewing at some point in the future.  The ending is maybe a bit pat in ways intended to send the audience out with a smile - I guess knife wounds to the gut are something you walk off.  But it's a solid bit of popcorn entertainment.

Per Wise - this movie feels like it's got a point of view, one that understands how to best use Mitchum - dropping him into this complex environment as an imperfect man.  The look of the film is also surely what makes folks associate it with noir.  At this point in time, I've seen enough different kinds of Westerns, I'll just say "sure, I get it".  But mostly I just think there's a solid, workmanlike effort paired with a sensibility that fits the material.

The *problem* with Wise as someone people remember or not, is that he doesn't really have a signature.  He's no Kubrick or Tarantino where you can spend five minutes with a movie and see the fingerprints of the auteur.  And what we'll be doing, instead, is seeing if we can sort out what material Wise covers and how.  We're only a portion of the way through Wise Watch, so it's hard to say.  He's still a newer director at RKO, but with some solid pictures under his belt.  But they're also all over the map.

Next up - a favorite around here, the Robert Ryan/ Audrey Totter boxing picture The Set-Up.