THE WALKING HILLS **

 This little known John Sturges movie boasts a fine cast, (Randolph Scott, John Ireland, Arthur Kennedy, Ella Raines, William Bishop), and a screenplay by Alan Le May, (he of "The Searchers" fame), and while it's no classic is certainly worth seeing. Scott is the leader of a group of gold hunters in Death Valley and "The Walking Hills" has been described as a Western Film-Noir. At times it resembles a B-Movie version of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" which came out the year before but as B-Movie homages go this is definitely a cut above and Sturges makes the most of the material. A little more action wouldn't go amiss but the film-noir credentials are all there with Raines making an excellent, hard-boiled leading lady and Scott playing nicely against type at times. It even manages to incorporate flashbacks into its neat 78 minute running time and almost enough songs by Josh White to turn it into a folk-musical-film-noir-western.