Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Cattle Stampede (1943, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy the Kid (Buster Crabbe), that western do-gooder who has been framed for crimes that he didn’t commit, narrowly escapes being captured by a group of bounty hunters.  To thank the man who helped him and his sidekick, Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al  St. John), escape, Billy agrees to help the man’s family make a cattle drive.  It turns out that local ranchers are being targeted by rustlers who cause the cattle to stampede and then buy up what’s left of the herd at a discount.  Even though Mary Dawson (Frances Gladwin) doesn’t trust Billy and initially suspects him of being one of the rustlers, Billy and Fuzzy take over the cattle drive and protect the family from Coulter (Glenn Strange) and Elkins (Frank Ellis).  They even prove their worth by rescuing Mary after she’s kidnapped by the villains.

This is one of the many Poverty Row westerns to feature Billy the Kid not as an outlaw but instead as a hero.  Best-known for playing Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers, Buster Crabbe was a believable hero even if he was more than a little too old to be nicknamed “the kid.”  Al St. John provides the comedic relief and veteran bad guys Charles King, Glenn Strange and Frank Ellis go through the motions as the villains, much as they did in countless other westerns of the era.  Cattle Stampede is typical of the cheap western programmers that came out of the Poverty Row studios in the 40s.  It was simplistic and predictable but featured enough western action to keep the kids in the audience entertained.  Today, its main selling point is a nostalgic one.

The Billy the Kid films are always strange because they avoid the reason why Billy is being pursued by the law and instead just present him as being another generic western hero.  It seems like a waste of a good legend.

Juke Girl (1942, directed by Curtis Bernhardt)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Farm workers Steve (Ronald Reagan) and Danny (Richard Whorf) arrives in Florida, looking for work.  The whole town is controlled by the corrupt Henry Madden (Gene Lockhart) but the honest Steve would rather work for Nick (George Tobias), who treats his workers fairly.  While Steve romances Lola Mears (Ann Sheridan), who works at a “juke joint,” he also tries to organize the other workers into demanding better conditions.  When Madden frames Steve and Lola for a murder, the entire town turns against them.

This is not a bad Warner Bros. melodrama.  As with a lot of Warner Bros. films, the heroes are the poor workers who have found themselves exploited by wealthy men like Madden.  As played by Ronald Reagan, Steve is no radical firebrand.  He is just someone who wants the workers to get a fair shake and who wants to help decent bosses like Nick make a living despite the efforts of Madden to put them out of business.  As was so often the case with his movies, Reagan is an affable hero without ever actually being compelling.  Gene Lockhart is the dependably hateful villain and the cast is full of dependable character actors, including Faye Emerson, Alan Hale, Howard Da Silva, and Fuzzy Knight.

Ann Sheridan is really the main reason to Juke Girl and she’s as sexy and tough as ever.  There’s a reason why this movie was named for her character’s profession, even though its really only a minor part of the film.  Sheridan is the main attraction here and she gives a strong performance as a bad girl who is actually good underneath it all.  Her character worries that settling down with Steve will mean a lifetime of struggling to make ends meet but she sees that Steve is worth it by the end of the movie.  The town may not be worthy of either of them but Steve and Lola are meant to be together.

May The Fourth Be With You: Looking Back At Star Wars

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today is Star Wars Day.  (It’s May 4th.  May the Fourth Be With You!  I’ll stop now.)  Five years ago, I ranked all of the Star Wars feature films that had been released up until that point from best to worst.  Here’s how I ranked them:

  1. The Empire Strikes Back
  2. Rogue One
  3. New Hope
  4. The Force Awakens
  5. Revenge of the Sith
  6. Return of the Jedi
  7. Solo
  8. The Rise of Skywalker
  9. The Last Jedi
  10. Attack of the Clones
  11. The Phantom Menace

Since that was a while ago, I decided to take a look back and see if I still felt the same way.  Here are my brief thoughts on each film, in order of release.

Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977, directed by George Lucas) — A New Hope may not be the best Star Wars film but it’s still the most entertaining, even if George Lucas doesn’t seem to realize that.  A tribute to the serials and space operas that Lucas grew up with, A New Hope features great action scenes, special effects that hold up well despite not being as slick as modern CGI, and great performances from Alec Guinness and Harrison Ford.  Mark Hamill would eventually become a much better actor, though you might not guess just from his performance here.  Watching New Hope today, I really appreciate that the movie doesn’t get bogged down in overexplaining things.  We don’t need to know what the Clone Wars were specifically about or what the Kessel Run actually was.  They sound cool and that’s all that was really required.  Despite what some claim, there is absolutely no evidence that Darth Vader was meant to be Luke’s father in this move.

Star Wars Holiday Special (1978, directed by Steve Binder) — Only aired once, I debated whether to include it here or not.  I eventually did just because it features the debut of Boba Fett.  It’s as bad as you’ve heard but the special’s real since is that it’s incredibly boring.  Harrison Ford still looks happier here than he did in Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980, directed by Irvin Kershner) — The best of the original trilogy, this installment was surprisingly dark, downbeat, and violent.  Mark Hamill finally started to show some signs of growth as an actor while Harrison Ford’s Han Solo continued to be the coolest rebel in the universe.  Combining the more thoughtful scenes with Yoda with the action-orientated scenes on Cloud City made this the most intelligent of the Star Wars films.  The battle on Hoth remains one of the best action scenes ever.  I think every kid who saw this movie wanted an AT-AT Walker.  I know I did.

Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983, directed by Richard Marquand) — It’s not quite as bad as its reputation, largely due to the opening with Jabba the Hutt’s court.  Jabba is so grotesque and evil in this movie that it’s hard not to regret that the subsequent films made him into more of buffoon than a crime lord.  Brining back the Death Star made this film feel like a retread.  The Ewoks were created to sell toys but so was everything else in this movie.  Harrison Ford looks particularly grouchy at the end.

The Ewok Adventure (1984, directed by John Korty) and Ewoks: The Battle For Endor (1985, directed by Jim and Ken Wheat) — I guess if these had been successful, there would have been an Ewok television show.  The Ewok Adventure feels childish and features a narrator.  Battle for Endor is surprisingly violent for a movie about teddy bears.  Both films are more bland than truly bad.

Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999, directed by George Lucas) — There’s been some revisionism about this film.  Some people actually defend it now.  Not me.  It’s still pointless.  This movie started the trend of every popular film having to have an in-depth “mythology” behind it.  It turns out that the Evil Empire was all about trade routes and tariffs.  Jake Lloyd gets more blame than he deserves.  Overexplaining the Force was a sign of things to come.  This movie would feature Natalie Portman’s worst performance if not for…

Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones (2o02, directed by George Lucas) — As painfully generic as its title, this movie was responsible for Hayden Christensen having an undeserved reputation for being a bad actor.  I doubt any actor, no matter how talented, could make Lucas’s dialogue feel natural.

Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (2005, directed by George Lucas) — The only one of the prequels that actually added anything to what we already knew, Revenge of the Sith is dark, violent, and it doesn’t have as many slow spots as the other prequels.  Ewan McGregor finally gets a chance to act and Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman are finally given actual characters to play.  Today, some people say it’s the best of the Star Wars films.  They’re wrong but it’s still pretty good.

The Clone Wars (2008, directed by Dave Filoni) — The only animated Star Wars film doesn’t get much attention and it does get bogged down in the mythology of the of the prequels.  No one really cares about the specifics of the Clone Wars.  The fact that it’s animated and clearly marketed at kids makes the dialogue easier to tolerate.

Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens (2015, directed by J.J. Abrams) — When this first came out, a lot of people (including myself) were so happy to have a new Star Wars film that we overrated it.  It’s hard to watch today without thinking about how bad things got after it was released but it does still hold up well as a space adventure, though Daisy Ridley’s blandness is more apparent on subsequent viewings.  The performances of Adam Driver and John Boyega still hold up.  The main attraction, though, is Harrison Ford returning as Han Solo.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016, directed by Gareth Edwards) — The first stand-alone live action Star Wars feature film is a thrilling space adventures that holds up on subsequent viewings and works because the stakes actually feel real.  For the first time since New Hope, the Death Star is actually frightening.  This remains one of the best films in the franchise and it’s not surprising that it led to the best of the Star Wars television shows.

Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi (2017, directed by Rian Johnson) — The haters are right about much of this film.  For all the complaints about Disney not allowing their Marvel directors much freedom, the Star Wars sequels shows what happens when a franchise isn’t sure where it wants to go.  Rian Johnson tries to bring Star Wars down to Earth but that’s not where we want Star Wars.  Rose Tico was an annoying character and her line about saving what we love deserves all of the mockery it received but Kelly Marie Tran still didn’t deserve to be run off of social media.  Turning Luke into a bitter old man was this film’s greatest sin.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018, directed by Ron Howard) — That this wasn’t a box office hit was the a clear warning sign that audiences were getting bored with Star Wars.  This Han Solo origin story isn’t bad.  Ron Howard could direct a film like this in his sleep.  It just feels unnecessary.  Alden Ehrenreich does his best but no one can replace Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker (2019, directed by J.J. Abrams) — J.J. Abrams tries to undo everything that Rian Johnson did in his film.  I don’t blame Abrams because Johnson’s film wasn’t great but just shrugging it all off doesn’t really work either.  The sequel trilogy, which started with such high hopes, ends with a whimper.  Daisy Ridley’s boring performance doesn’t help.

My rankings, as of 2025, are below:

  1. The Empire Strikes Back
  2. Rogue One
  3. New Hope
  4. Revenge of the Sith
  5. Return of the Jedi
  6. Force Awakens
  7. Solo
  8. Rise of Skywalker
  9. The Last Jedi
  10. Ewoks: Battle for Endor
  11. The Clone Wars
  12. The Ewok Adventure
  13. Holiday Special
  14. Phantom Menace
  15. Attack of the Clones

Girls On Probation (1938, directed by William C. McGann)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Eager to get away from her abusive father (Sig Ruman), Connie Heath (Jane Bryan) keeps making the mistake of hanging out with the ultimate bad friend, Hilda Engstrom (Sheila Bromley).  Hilda steals a dress from where they work and when the dress is torn, Hilda lets Connie take the blame.  When the dress’s owner (Susan Hayward, making her film debut) insists on pressing charges, insurance investigator Neil Dillon (Ronald Reagan) helps Connie get off the hook and out of jail.

Having not learned her lesson, Connie continues to hang out with Hilda and her new boyfriend, Tony Rand (Anthony Averill).  This time, Connie gets caught up in a bank robbery.  Will Neil be able to get her out of another jam?

63-minutes long, Girl on Probation is a Warner Bros. B-movie.  Ronald Reagan is surprisingly mellow as someone falling in love with a woman who keeps getting framed for his crimes she didn’t commit.  Sheila Bromley steals the show as the out-of-control dangerous blonde who tells a priest, “I’m about to meet your boss.”  The main problem with the film is that Connie is incredibly stupid.  How many times can one person be framed?  Jane Bryan, who played Connie, ended her acting career when she got married but she and her millionaire husband later helped to bankroll Reagan’s first political campaign and both of them were members of his unofficial “kitchen cabinet” when he was governor of California.

The movie has never been released on DVD and is hard to find.  It plays on TCM occasionally, which is where I saw it.  Online, the only place it appears to be streaming, ironically enough, is on a Russian site.

Angels Wash Their Faces (1939, directed by Ray Enright)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Gangster William Kroner (Bernard Nedell) and his henchman Martino (Eduardo Ciannelli) frame teenager Gabe Ryan (Frankie Thomas) for setting several buildings on fire.  Because Gabe has just gotten out of reform school and is a member of a local neighborhood gang, they know that no one will believe him or his sister, Joy (Ann Sheridan).

What Kroner and Martino did not count on were the Dead End Kids (Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, and Benard Punsley).  They’re not going to sit by while the adults send their friend to jail.  Plus, one of their friends was killed in one of the fires.  The kids are out for revenge and sympathetic district attorney Pat Remsen (Ronald Reagan) is on their side.

As a publicity stunt, the city is holding an election for “Kid Mayor.”  The Kid Mayor gets to run the city for a week.  What could go wrong?  Billy Halop decides to run for Kid Mayor so that he can order the arrest of Kroner and then beat a confession out of him.

Angels Wash Their Faces was one of the last of the studio-made Dead End Kid films.  After this one, they would be sent down to Poverty Row and their films would be more obviously comedic.  Angels Wash Their Faces starts out as a juvenile delinquent drama, with Gabe struggling to rebuild his life and keep on the right track.  Then it becomes a goofy comedy, with Billy Halop running for mayor and unleashing vigilante justice on the bad guys.  I’m not sure that any city would actually give the “kid mayor” the power to lock people up.  Whoever came up with the idea of a kid mayor should be run out of politics.

On the positive side, Ann Sheridan is beautiful.  Future president Reagan is his usual friendly self.  On the negative side, the movie, overall, lacks the edge that made the first few Dead End Kids films memorable and the Dead End Kids themselves seem to be pretty much interchangeable.  Huntz Hall would have made a better mayor.

 

The Girl From Jones Beach (1949, directed by Peter Godfrey)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Painter Bob Randolph is famous for painting a beautiful woman who is known as “the Randolph Girl.”  Everyone wants to meet the model but they can’t because there is no one model.  Instead, there are a dozen models, each with a perfect feature that Bob uses in his paintings.  In need of money, Bob and his business partner, Chuck Donavon (Eddie Bracken) search for a woman who can be the real-life Randolph Girl.  Chuck thinks that he’s found her when he spots school teacher Ruth Wilson (Virginia Mayo) but Ruth has no interest in being a model.  She wants to be known for how she thinks and not how she looks.  Hoping to change her mind, Randolph pretends to be Czech immigrant and enrolls in Ruth’s citizenship class.

When a photograph of Ruth in a swimsuit is published without her prior knowledge, the school board decides that Ruth is not a good role model and they fire her.  With the support of Bob and Chuck, Ruth sues for reinstatement.  Bob ends up posing in the courtroom in his own swimsuit, the better to prove that there’s nothing wrong with  appearing in public in a swimsuit.

The role of Ruth was originally offered to Lauren Bacall, who turned it down because she didn’t think she could play a pin-up.  Not to knock Bacall but Virginia Mayo does seem like a better choice for the role of Ruth and she does a good job of bringing the role to life.  She proves to be a good match for Ronald Reagan, whose amiable nature allows him to get away with taking her class under a false pretext and speaking in a mangled approximation of a foreign accent.  The comedy is light and it fits well with Reagan’s affable screen presence.  The film is pleasant but ultimately lightweight and forgettable.  I can understand why, by this point in his career, Reagan was getting frustrated with the quality of scripts he was being sent.  The Girl From Jones Beach would be forgotten today if it didn’t star the future president of the United States.

Stallion Road (1947, directed by James V. Kern)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Writer Stephen Purcell comes out to the country to visit an old school friend, veterinarian Larry Hanrahan (Ronald Reagan).  Larry is great at taking care of horses but a little clueless when it comes to women.  Both rancher Rory Teller (Alexis Smith) and Rory’s neighbor, Daisy Otis (Peggy Knudsen), have a thing for Larry but Larry is kept pretty busy taking care of all the horses in the community.  Stephen decides that he likes Rory but, deep down, he knows there’s no way he can compete with Larry.  When Larry gets busy tending to an anthrax outbreak, Rory finds herself tempted to give Stephen a shot.

When Stallion Road originally went into production, Humphrey Bogart was cast as Stephen and Lauren Bacall was cast as Rory.  Both of the stars refused to do the movie, feeling it was too lightweight.  Audiences were cheated out of a chance to see Reagan and Bogart, who were friends despite their differing styles of acting, co-starring opposite each other.  (They were both in Dark Victory but they didn’t share any scenes.)  Speaking of Bogart and Reagan, it’s a Hollywood legend that Reagan was originally offered the role of Rick in Casablanca though I’ve also read that Reagan was actually offered the role of Victor Laszlo.

Bogart and Bacall were right.  Stallion Road is the epitome of lightweight entertainment, with Reagan giving a pleasant but bland performance as Larry and the film never really allowing any doubt as to who Rory belongs with.  It’s the type of movie that would be a Hallmark film today so if you’re actually looking for a realistic drama about ranching and taking care of horses, it’s best to look elsewhere.  This film does show why Reagan was such a successful politician.  Even though his character isn’t exactly exciting, he’s innately likable and, from the minute he first appears, he’s dependable.  He’s someone who any rancher would trust to take care of their horses.

 

Nine Lives Are Not Enough (1941, directed by A. Edward Sutherland)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Matt Sawyer (Ronald Reagan) is a junior reporter whose enthusiasm for breaking the big news is always getting him in trouble.  Sometimes, he runs with a story before getting all of his facts straight and the newspaper gets sued.  If not for his enthusiasm and his affability, Matt would have been fired a long time ago.  Instead of losing his job, Matt just finds himself demoted to riding in a squad car with Sgt. Daniels (James Gleason) and the slow-witted Officer Slattery (Edward Brophy).  Matt still manages to find a story when he and the cops discover a dead man in a flophouse.

The man turns out to have been a millionaire.  The coroner rules his death a suicide but Matt is convinced that it was murder.  How could the man have shot himself if he died with his hands in his pockets?  Over the objections of the police and his editors, Matt investigates the man’s death.  Helping him out is the man’s daughter, Jane Abbott (Joan Perry).

Nine Lives Are Not Enough is one the many B-pictures that Ronald Regan made for Warner Bros.  It’s only 63 minutes long and, despite the murder mystery, the emphasis is more on comedy than drama.  For all of his reputation for being a stiff actor, Reagan proves himself to be surprisingly adroit when it comes to exchanging snappy dialogue with his editor.  This film showcases the innate likability that made Reagan a success as both an actor and a politician.  What he lacks in range, he makes up for in sheer affability.  Watching Reagan in movies like this, it is easy to see the limitations that kept him from being a major star while also revealing why he later had so much success asking people to vote for him.

Considering how the press felt and still feels about Ronald Reagan, it’s entertaining to see him cast as a reporter who has a reputation for getting the story wrong.  When it’s really important, though, Matt Sawyer gets it right.

Accidents Will Happen (1938, directed by William Clemens)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Eric Gregg (Ronald Reagan) is an insurance claims adjuster who works hard, always has a cheerful attitude, and is inexplicably married to a greedy, dishonest woman named Nona (Sheila Gregg).  When Nona, sick of not being able to afford to live like a rich person, starts claiming to be a witness to accidents that didn’t really happen, it leads to Eric losing his job.  Eric is also dumped by Nona, who heads off to Reno.  Luckily, Patricia (Gloria Blondell), who works as the candy counter clerk at Eric’s office building, is just as eager to hook up with Eric and he is with her.

But what’s this?  Soon, Eric and Patricia are running insurance scams of their own and Eric is being recruited into a gang of fraudsters that’s led by Blair Thurston (Addison Richards).  Has Eric gone bad or does he have something else up his sleeve?

Accident Will Happen is one of the many B-movies that Ronald Reagan made before he briefly became a star as the result of Knute Rockne — All American and Kings Row.  It’s only 62 minutes long and the story moves quickly. The plot features a pretty obvious twist and it ends with some courtroom theatrics that I doubt anyone could have gotten away with in real life.  As with most of his B-performances, Reagan is likable even if there’s not much depth to his character.  Watching him hit bottom and then climb back up is satisfying because Reagan is so affable in the role.  Accidents Will Happen also stands out for its portrayal of an unhappy marriage, with Eric not realizing how miserable and greedy Nona is until she leaves him when he needs her the most.  Luckily, Gloria Blondell (who was the sister of Joan Blondell) is cute and perky and a far better match for our Reagan.  In the end, Ronald Reagan defeats insurance fraud as surely as he defeated the Soviets in the Cold War.

Sea of Love (1989, directed by Harold Becker)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In New York City, someone is ritualistically murdering the men who are placing rhyming personal ads in a tabloid newspaper.  Assigned to the case is Frank Keller (Al Pacino), an alcoholic burn-out whose wife just left him for another cop.  Keller and his partner (John Goodman) decide to go undercover.  Frank places a rhyming personal ad of his own and then goes to a restaurant to see who shows up.  When Helen Cruger (Ellen Barkin) answers the ad, it leads to a relationship between Frank and Helen.  Frank is falling for Helen but what if she’s the murderer?

Sea of Love is a superior thriller, even though it doesn’t really work as a mystery.  As soon as you see a certain person’s name in the cast list, you’re going to guess who the killer is because that person is always the killer.  Sea of Love isn’t really about the mystery, though.  It’s about people looking something that’s missing from their lives and realizing that the world is passing them by.  The movie works because of the performances of Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin, cast as two lonely middle-aged people who are desperately looking for some sort of connection.  Helen and Frank are both in their 40s and wondering if their current situation is really as good as it’s going to get.  The film uses Frank’s fear that Helen could be the killer as a metaphor for the fear that anyone feels when they are first starting to open up to someone.  Both Pacino and Barkin give emotionally raw and poignant performances.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Al Pacino look as miserable as he did for the majority of Sea of Love.  This was Pacino’s first film role after the disaster of Revolution and the movie’s box office success was revived Pacino’s career and convinced him to give movies a try again.

Director Harold Becker captures the feel of New York at its grittiest and least welcoming and Richard Price’s script is full of priceless dialogue.  This is one of the rare films in which everyone has something intelligent or meaningful to say.  Featuring a strong supporting cast and career-best performances from Ellen Barkin and Al Pacino, Sea of Love is much more than just another cop film.