CREDITS RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (GUNS IN THE AFTERNOON), 1962 dir: Sam Peckinpah Joel McCrea Randolph Scott Mariette Hartley

“The day of the Forty-niner is gone. The day of the steady businessman has arrived. ”

Veteran Western star Randolph Scott came out of, then went back into, retirement for this excellent, atmospheric early Sam Peckinpah movie.

The setting is the fictitious ‘Coarsegold’, but Peckinpah uses the glorious forested peaks of the High Sierras near Bishop, central California, to capture the change in terrain as the party climbs and descends. In the end, though, bad weather cut short the location filming and the company was forced to decamp back to dependable old Griffith Park in LA.

You'll find Bishop in the Inyo National Forest on I-395, the terrifically scenic highway running between Ridgecrest and Carson City. Soapsuds were substituted for snow, and the tents were cut from the sails of the ‘Bounty’ built for the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty!

Other locations used include Frenchman’s Flat; the Conejo Valley; the Fox Ranch in Malibu Canyon – and even the MGM backlot.

Inyo National Forest is an area much used for filming. Just to the south is the town of Lone Pine, where the backdrop of the Alabama Hills has been used in countless classic movies since the thirties. If you're near Bishop, you can also check out some of the dazzling ‘Alpine’ locations for Star Trek: Insurrection.

HARD COPY: For the details of the filming locations of 1,600 of your favourite movies, check out The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations. 464 pages of fascinating facts, illustrated with over 1,000 original photographs.