Unlike the more sanitized cinematic West of earlier generations, Peckinpah's grittier view of daily life contrasted against beautiful, majestic landscapes heavily influenced the look of Westerns made after Ride the High Country. The Sierra mining camp, in particular, with its ramshackle, makeshift shelters and hard-looking prostitutes (versus the glamorized "saloon girls" of earlier Westerns) strongly calls to mind Robert Altman's film of several years later, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971).

Peckinpah is credited with having contributed much to a change in the style and substance of the Western, offering an often sad, grim portrait of the American frontier in its last days. His impact is felt in such movies as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and in the work of Clint Eastwood, particularly the Oscar®-winning Unforgiven (1992), which has much to do with an aging man facing a changing West.

Peckinpah is probably best known for his stylized and extreme violence, which is relatively benign in Ride the High Country compared with such later films as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971). His work became so synonymous with violence that it was spoofed by the British comedy troupe Monty Python on their TV show, which featured an episode of an aristocratic English period piece ("Salad Days") staged with much pain and gore by the director.

Ride the High Country was arguably the first time the term "peckerwood" was used in a Hollywood picture. Peckinpah heard a friend's black girlfriend use it to describe a bigoted white person and decided to put it in as McCrea's slur against the "Southern trash" Hammond boys.

"The picture keeps following me around. People still talk about it all the time. It was a real high point in my career. But you never know how good it is when you're doing it."- James Drury

"It was a pleasure to do a picture with a man who can write, direct, and knows the West. I saw the picture at the studio and think everyone connected with it did a good job. I hope the public likes it as well as I do. If so, we have a hit. I'll expect to hear big things about you in the years ahead." - Joel McCrea, in a letter to Peckinpah shortly after the film's completion

by Rob Nixon