Running Target (1956) is an unusual, philosophical film that is unaccountably omitted from Phil Hardy’s comprehensive encyclopedic filmography The Western. For the director, Marvin R. Weinstein, this was his only movie. Filmed in beautiful color in the Sawatch Range in central Colorado – the young Conrad L. Hall was the “cinematography supervisor” – Running Target follows a five-person posse tracking four prison escapees, and seems to be inspired by the same local 1947 incident that triggered the films Canon City (1948) and Crashout (1955) (those films were told from the POV of the escapees).

Running Target is a bracingly outdoors film, with only three crucial night scenes and one cabin interior that might have been shot on sets. But against this natural backdrop is conducted a sustained debate on violence between two characters that are intentionally made symbolic embodiments of arguments – the enlightened Sheriff Scott (Arthur Franz) and the bloodthirsty gun-loving volunteer Jaynes (Richard Reeves). In realistic terms, both men are way too tightly wound than is good for them (and thus more alike than either would admit). “Rural sheriff” seems to be an odd platform for Scott to be working out his Camus-like theories, but that is built into the texture and is part of the movie’s fascination. Franz is superb here, and what a contrast from his breezy fun-loving character in New Orleans Uncensored, released the preceding year.

There is lots going on in Running Target, including the presence of a woman member of the posse (Doris Dowling) whose important backstory is teased but never explicitly spelled out. That lack of explicitness contributes mightily to the film’s memorable tableau-like ending, which along with the overall journey seems a precursor to Monte Hellman’s The Shooting (1966) a decade later. Also worth noting is Ernest Gold’s original and effective score. Altogether a movie that deserves a reputation and a cult, but has neither.