The Naked Spur is a 1953 American Western film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, and Millard Mitchell.

Written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, the film is about a bounty hunter who tries to bring a murderer to justice, and is forced to accept the help of two strangers who are less than trustworthy.

The Naked Spur was filmed on location in Durango and the San Juan Mountains in Colorado and in Lone Pine, California.

In 1997, The Naked Spur was added to the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In 2021, The Naked Spur was released on Blu-ray in the North American region by Warner Bros. in their Archive Collection.

In 1868, in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Howard Kemp offers grizzled prospector Jesse Tate $20[5] for help tracking Ben Vandergroat, wanted for killing a marshal in Abilene, Kansas.

On the trail, Vandergroat wages a constant psychological campaign to turn his captors against each other by various means, starting with the observation that the reward will be larger divided by two.

Scouting a mountain pass, Kemp and Tate spot a dozen Blackfoot far from their normal territory.

Later, Vandergroat loosens Kemp's saddle cinch and pushes him over the edge of a steep mountain trail.

The "Beautiful Dreamer" theme plays as Lina describes her dream of California and Kemp reminisces about his ranch.

At the river, now running so high they must detour downstream, Anderson lassoes Vandergroat's neck, intending to drag the “sack of money” across.

While Kemp and Anderson recover and Lina searches for firewood, Vandergroat offers Tate an irresistible temptation: a gold mine.

Kemp drags Vandergroat's body across the river and hoists it onto his horse, in a rage, vowing that he will take him back.

The rifles are also anachronistic, with the Winchester having an iron/steel receiver, which was not available until 1873 (earlier models were brass), and the Marlin having side ejection, which was not available until 1889.

Stewart was given the lead role of Howard Kemp, an embittered rancher turned bounty hunter.

Robert Ryan, known for his roles as ruthless villains and hard-boiled cops, was cast as Ben Vandergroat, a wild killer with a $5,000 "dead or alive" bounty on his head for the murder of a Kansas marshal.

Janet Leigh was cast as Lina Patch, Vandergroat's companion who eventually falls in love with Kemp.

Leigh starred alongside Ryan in the film noir Act of Violence (1948), which was directed by Fred Zinnemann.

Millard Mitchell, who played Jesse Tate, a grizzled old prospector, died at fifty years of age from lung cancer shortly after this picture.

I wanted to show the mountains, the waterfalls, the forested areas, the snowy summits – in short to rediscover the whole Daniel Boone atmosphere: the characters emerge more fully from such an environment.

"[10] According to writer and historian Frederic B. Wildfang, during filming Stewart dedicated a monument in town, marking the area as the "Hollywood of the Rockies".

"[12] Empire also hailed the movie as "a masterpiece that’s too easy to take for granted" and "the best of an outstanding run of Westerns.