Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Law of the Valley (1944, directed by Howard Bretherton)

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Dan Stanton (Edmund Cobb) and Condon (Tom Quinn) are planning to run a bunch of ranchers off their land by cutting off their water supply.  Once the ranchers leave, Stanton and Condon will be able to sell their land to the railroads.  After the bad guys murder a rancher named Jennings (George Morell), the rancher’s daughter (Lynne Carver) sends a message to U.S. Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton).  Old friends of the murdered rancher, Sandy and Nevada come to town to rally the ranchers against Stanton and his men and to free up the water that’s been dammed up.

This was a pretty standard Johnny Mack Brown western.  Johnny Mack Brown and Raymond Hatton always made for a good team but the story here is pretty predictable.  After you watch enough B-westerns, you start to wonder if there were any made that weren’t about outlaws trying to run ranchers off their land.  It’s interesting that these movies almost always center, in some way, around the coming of the railroad.  The railroad is opening up the frontier and bringing America together but it also brings out the worst in the local miscreants.

As with a lot of B-westerns, the main pleasure comes from spotting the familiar faces in the cast.  Charles King and Herman Hack play bad guys.  Tex Driscoll plays a rancher.  Horace B. Carpenter has a small role.  These movies were made and remade with the same cast so often that that watching them feels like watching a repertory company trying out their greatest hits.

The Tioga Kid (1948, directed by Ray Taylor)

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Singing Ranger Eddie Dean (played by the same-named Eddie Dean) and his sidekick, Soapy Jones (Roscoe Ates), are sent to track down the Tioga Kid, an outlaw who happens to look just like Eddie.  Soapy suggests that The Tioga Kid could be a long lost twin brother.  Eddie isn’t sure because his parents were killed in an Indian ambush when he was just a baby.  This seemed to be the backstory for many of Poverty Row’s favorite western heroes.

Dean plays both Eddie and the Tioga Kid.  You can tell them apart because the Tioga Kid doesn’t sing and always dresses in black while Eddie dresses in white and won’t stop singing.  Twin rivals were another big thing when it came to B-westerns.  Thanks to then revolutionary split-screen technology, matinee audiences could enjoy the sight of their favorite heroes shooting at themselves.  Eddie Dean was usually cast as a mild-mannered hero so he really seems to enjoy the chance to be bad as the Tioga Kid.

The Tioga Kid is a film that will be appreciated by those who are already fans of B-westerns.  The Tioga Kid was made late in the B-western cycle and there are a lot signs that it was made in a hurry.  There’s a scene involving a stunt man where he’s not even wearing the same shirt as the person he’s standing in for.  Matinee audiences probably didn’t mind.  They were too busy watching Eddie Dean shoot at himself and cheering him on during the movie’s big fist fight scene.  Eddie Dean may not have been a great actor but he could throw a punch with the best of them.

North of Arizona (1935, directed by Harry S. Webb)

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Newly hired ranch foreman Jack Loomis (Jack Perrin) comes to the aid of two Indians who were nearly swindled out of their land during a card game.  The Indians inform Jack that his new boss, George Tully (Al Bridge), is actually a crook and the ranch is just a front for his criminal activities.  When Jack says he doesn’t want to be a part of Tully’s schemes, Tully and his men frame Jack for a robbery.

After you watch enough of these Poverty Row westerns, you start to get the feeling that anyone in the 30s could walk into a studio and star in a B-western.  Jack Perrin was a World War I veteran who had the right look to be the star of several silent films but once the sound era came along, his deficiencies as an actor became very apparent.  He could ride a horse and throw a punch without looking too foolish but his flat line delivery made him one of the least interesting of the B-western stars.  That’s the case here, where Perrin is a boring hero and the entire plot hinges on the villain making one really big and really stupid mistake.  John Wayne could have pulled this movie off but Jack Perrin was lost.

Jack Perrin’s career as a star ended just a few years after this film but not because he was a bad actor.  Instead, Perrin filed a lawsuit after a studio failed to pay him for starring in one of their films.  From 1937 until he retirement in 1960, Perrin was reduced to playing minor roles for which he often went uncredited.  Hollywood could handle a bad actor but not an actor who expected to be paid for his work.

Texas Buddies (1932, directed by Robert N. Bradbury)

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Ted “Jet” Morgan (Bob Steele) returns home from World War I.  When he gets off the train in his small, western town, he’s met by Si “Old Timer” Haller (George “Gabby” Hayes).  Si explains that Ted’s aunt is dead and his uncle was run out of town for being a drunk.  Alice, “the girl next door” who Ted hoped to marry, married someone else.  Si invites Ted to stay with him.  Ted agrees and things start to look up when he meets Si’s niece, June (Nancy Drexel).

Meanwhile, a gang of outlaws led by Ken Kincade (Harry Semel) hijack a mail plane and steal the payroll that it was carrying.  Ted is not nicknamed Jet for nothing.  He not only know how to ride a horse but he’s good with planes too.  With the help of Si and the local sheriff (William Dyer), he aims to stop those turn of the century skyjackers before they can force another unexpected landing.

Though the film takes place after World War I and features Bob Steele flying a plane and Gabby Hayes driving the same car he drove in Rainbow Valley, this is definitely a western.  Before he proves himself as a pilot, Ted has to prove himself as a horseman and the movie ends with a traditional western gunfight.  The postwar setting does still bring some unexpected elements to the story.  Ted’s lonely arrival in his hometown reflects what it was like for many veterans returning home from Europe.  At first, Ted doesn’t feel like he has a place in his old town but he soon gets a chance to prove to both himself and the townspeople that he belongs.

Bob Steele and Gabby Hayes are good heroes.  Robert N. Bradbury, who was also Steele’s father, was one of the best of the B-western directors.  For fans of the genre, this film is a definite treat.

S.F.W. (1994, directed by Jefery Levy)

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Cliff Spab (Stehpen Dorff), his friend Joe Dice (Jack Noseworthy), and teenager Wendy Pfister (Reese Witherspoon) are in the wrong convenience store at the wrong time and end up being taken hostage by a group of masked terrorists who have guns and video cameras.  For 36 days straight, their ordeal is broadcast live on television.  They become the number one show in the country and Cliff’s nihilistic attitude makes him a star.  When the terrorists threaten to kill him, he spits back, “So fucking what!?”  Alienated young people take up S.F.W. as a personal chant and credo.  When Joe finally fights back, both he and the terrorists are killed in the shoot-out.  Wendy and Cliff are now celebrities, even though they don’t want to be.  Released into the real world, Cliff has to deal with everyone wanting to make money off of him.  His alienation has been turned into a product.  He just wants to be reunited with Wendy but his fans want him to tell them how to live their lives.  Fandom turns out be a fickle beast.

Earlier this morning, I came across a news item that Jefery Levy, the director of S.F.W., had died at the age of 67.  S.F.W. used to show up frequently on cable in the 90s but I hadn’t thought about it in years.  When I first saw S.F.W., I didn’t care much for it.  Cliff came across as being a poseur and Stephen Dorff came across like he was way too impressed with himself.  With John Roarke playing everyone from Phil Donahue to Sam Donaldson and Gary Coleman appearing as himself, the movie seemed like it was trying too hard to be outrageous.  Looking back on it now, though, I realize S.F.W. may not have been a good movie but it was still a very prophetic movie.  What seemed implausible in the 90s — like the 36-day live stream from inside the convenience store hostage situation and Cliff Spab’s fans switching their allegiance to a self-righteous virgin who yells that everything matters while trying to assassinate him — feels far too plausible today. 

In 1994, S.F.W. and Jefery Levy predicted the 2020s.  The only thing it got wrong was having Cliff Spab not wanting to be a famous.  Today, Cliff Spab would probably be presenting the Best Podcast award at the Golden Globes.

Guns of the Law (1944, directed by Elmer Clifton)

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Three Texas Rangers — Tex Wyatt (Dave O’Brien), Jim Steele (James Newill), and Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkerson) — ride into a small town.  They each arrive separately and they all sing while sitting on their horses.  They’re in town to help out Jed Wilkins, who was Panhandle’s superior officer during the Civil War.  Jed is having a nervous breakdown because a crooked surveyor (Jack Ingram) and shifty lawyer (Charles King) are trying to cheat him out of his land.  Jed thinks that he’s serving in the war again so Panhandle has to wear his old Confederate uniform to keep Jed from losing it any further.

The Texas Rangers starred in a series of B-westerns.  This one is mostly amiable, though I think modern viewers will probably have a more difficult time with the Confederate uniform than viewers did in 1944.    Having watched enough of these movies, I’ve lost track of the number of crooked lawyers that Charles King played over the years.  He was one of the great B-movie villains, that’s for sure.

I don’t really know what to make of the singing cowboy genre.  Why are they singing while riding through the wilderness and trying not to get shot?  Do all of the Texas Rangers sing or is it just these three?  This movie raises so many questions.  What’s odd is that the songs in this movie are actually really catchy.  I can still remember the tunes, if not all of the lyrics.  Don’t break the law, the Rangers sang as they rode out of town at the end of the movie.  Don’t break the law.

The Rawhide Terror (1934, directed by Jack Nelson and Bruce Mitchell)

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There are some Poverty Row westerns that even I can’t defend.

A group of bandits, disguised as Indians, attack a pioneer family.  The father and the mother are killed but their twin boys survive.  One wanders into the wilderness while the other stays with the remains of his family and waits for help.  Years later, the town of Red Dog is thriving, with the former bandits as its leading citizens.  Someone has been gunning down the former bandits.  The townspeople demand that Sheriff Luke (Edmund Cobb) do something about the man that they’ve nicknamed the Rawhide Killer.  First, however, Luke has to deal with Jim Briggs (William Barrymore), who has been abusing his son (Tommy Bupp).  It also turns out that Jim Briggs is the Rawhide  Killer and he’s looking for vengeance against those who killed his parents.  Jim’s brother also lives in the town.  Guess who!

The Rawhide Terror gets off to a good start with the bandit attack but it falls apart soon afterwards.  I don’t know if it was just because I was watching a bad print but the sound quality was terrible and the lack of an original score really highlighted just how boring it is to watch men silently ride their horses from one side of the screen to the other.  This movie was only 47 minutes long and half of it was made up of shots of people riding horses.  Add some really bad acting and you’ve got a western that was bad even by the standards of a 1934 second feature.

Two men are credited with directing the film, though the production was actually supervised by Victor Adamson, the father of the notorious schlock filmmaker, Al Adamson.

Rainbow Valley (1935, directed by Robert N. Bradbury)

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In the early 1900s, the town of Rainbow Valley is trying to complete a road that will connect it to another town.  Outlaw Rogers (LeRoy Mason) doesn’t want that road finished because he wants to buy up all the land around Rainbow Valley.  He brings in a hired gun named Galt (Jay Wilsey) to intimidate the townspeople.  When a traveler named John Martin (John Wayne) saves mail carrier George Hale (George “Gabby” Hayes) from the outlaws, the townspeople ask Martin to serve as their marshal and to help finish the road.  Martin agrees but it turns out that he and Galt have a history.

This was one of the B-westerns that John Wayne made before Stagecoach made him a major star.  Wayne gives a confident performance as John Martin.  It’s about as close to a traditional John Wayne performance as you are likely to find in his early films.  It’s a good and short western, with enough gunfire and tough talk to appeal to fans of the genre.

The most interesting thing about this film is that it takes place at the turn of the century, when the old west was being replaced by the modern world.  Everyone in town is amazed that George Hale drives a car.  John says that it’s the first car that he’s ever actually seen.  Of course, this is a western and all the important work is done on horseback.  The best part of the movie is when George realizes that he and Miss Eleanor (Lucille Brown) can’t drive to warn John about an ambush because the car is out of gas and there’s not a filling station to be found.  Eleanor can’t ride a horse so he does the next best thing.  He has the horses pull his Model T like a wagon!

Four years after this movie came out, John Wayne starred as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach.  In Rainbow Valley, he showed that he was already a star.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Steven Soderbergh Edition

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4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Today, we wish a happy birthday to one the early pioneers of independent film, Steven Soderbergh.  Soderbergh was 26 years old in 1989, when he became the youngest director to ever win the Palme d’Or at Cannes.  Soderbergh went on to become one of the busiest and most interesting director in Hollywood, working in all genres and inspiring filmmakers the world over.

4 Shots From 4 Films

sex, lies, and videotape (1989, directed by Steven Soderbergh)

Kafka (1991, directed by Steven Soderbergh)

Out of Sight (1998, directed by Steven Soderbergh)

Traffic (2000, directed by Steven Soderbergh)

Music Video of the Day: Going Back To Cali by LL Cool J (1988, directed by Rick Menello)

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Today is LL Cool J’s birthday.

Going Back to Cali was a song that originally appeared on the Less Than Zero soundtrack.  Supposedly, the song is as much about producer Rick Rubin’s ambivalence towards Los Angeles as it is about LL Cool J’s feelings towards the city.

The video was directed by Ric Menello, who best-known for his work with the Beastie Brothers and for his later collaborations with director James Gray.  One of the dancers is MTV VJ Martha Quinn, who was dating the video’s cinematographer at the time.

Enjoy!