This video is just Megadeth doing what Megadeth does best.
The Blair Underwood who directed this video is the same Blair Underwood who co-starred in L.A. Law and several subsequent films. They seem like an unlikely combination, as Underwood was outspoken in his support of President Obama while Dave Mustaine was definitely not. However, this is actually just one of several videos that Underwood did with Megadeth. Music brings us all together.
Enjoy!
Brock Masters (Mark Roberts) has been awarded a contract to supply the army with horses. Corrupt businessman Grat Hanlon (Clayton Moore) wants that contract for himself so he sends his henchmen to kill Brock. Because Brock has no known relatives, Grat believes that both the horses and the contract will soon be his.
However, Brock does have an heir! He adopted an Indian child named Johnny (Louis Lettieri). Johnny inherits the contract and both the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) and Smiley Burnett are going to make sure that Johnny is able to deliver the horses. Smiley is also going to find some time to sing some songs that have even less to do with the story than usual.
Cyclone Fury was one of the later entries in the Durango Kid series. By the time it was made, Colombia was no longer willing to spend much money on the series so that majority of the film’s action scenes are lifted from other Durango Kid movies. If you’ve never seen another Durango Kid movie, the action scenes are exciting and feature some impressive stunts. If you have seen another Durango Kid movie, this one is going to seem really familiar.
For western fans, the main appeal here will be seeing Clayton Moore playing a bad guy. Moore had already played The Lone Ranger when he appeared in this movie. At the time Cyclone Fury was made, Moore had been unceremoniously fired from his most famous role and The Lone Ranger was being played by John Hart. Hart would only last a season and Moore would subsequently be invited back to play the role that defined his career. As for Cyclone Fury, Moore is convincing as Grat, though the character himself is just a typical Durango Kid bad guy. The Durango Kid was always going up against seemingly respectable businessmen who were actually outlaws.
One final note: Moore’s Lone Ranger co-star, Jay Silverheels, appears in this film but only in archival footage from an early adventure of The Durango Kid.
In this video for Wild Child, Blackie Lawless follows one woman through the desert, just for her to always disappear when he gets too close. Maybe she knows that W.A.S.P. and Blackie Lawless were among the top targets of Tipper Gore’s anti-rock campaign in the 80s. Supposedly, at the heyday of Gore’s crusade, venues that booked W.A.S.P. would get bomb threats while the members of the band were themselves receiving death threats. Someone even tried to shoot Blackie Lawless.
(Ironically, Blackie Lawless was raised in the church and is reportedly even more of a Christian than Tipper Gore was at the time she was accusing W.A.S.P. of corrupting America’s youth.)
This video was directed by Rick Friedberg, who went from working with W.A.S.P. to working with Leslie Nielsen on several projects.
Enjoy!
Tom and Fred Denton (Preston Foster and Jim Davis) are two frontier lawmen who are frustrated with their jobs. They are both owed backpay. When they shoot an outlaw, they are expected to pay the $80 burial fee. Neither Tom nor Fred feels that they are appreciated by banks and the railroads that expect them to risk their lives on a daily basis.
When Tom and Fred are informed that their younger brother, Matt (Kim Spalding), has been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in another town, they ride off to save him.
Even though Tom and Fred can both provide an alibi for Matt and it is obvious that Matt has been framed by a corrupt railroad agent, the town is still determined to hang him. Tom and Fred manage to rescue him from the gallows but, in the process, a deputy is killed. Now wanted by the authorities, the Denton brothers are forced to team up with the same outlaws that they used to hunt. Soon, the Dentons are robbing banks and trains and their old friend, Pete Coleman (Monte Blue), has been ordered to captured them, dead or alive.
One of the many low budget westerns to be produced by the Lippert Company, Three Desperate Men is a cut above the usual B-western. None of the Dentons want to be outlaws but they are forced into it by circumstances out of their control. The real villains of the film are the bankers and the railroad tycoons who hoard the land and the money and who try to cheat men like Tom and Fred out of their rightfully earned wages. The Denton brothers ultimately decide that their number one loyalty is to each other and that leads to the movie’s fatalistic conclusion, which is surprisingly violent for a 1951 western. Preston Foster, Jim Davis, and Monte Blue head a cast that is full of tough and authentic western veterans and the action scenes are imaginatively staged by director Sam Newfield. Three Desperate Men is a B-western that can be enjoyed even by those who don’t like westerns.
Oh look, it’s another Nigel Dick-directed hair metal video.
And it’s another Cinderella video featuring the band doing their version of rocking while being watched by a bunch of hot woman who were probably hoping Bon Jovi would show up instead.
But wait? Who’s that? It’s Wayne and Garth!
This song appeared on the Wayne’s World soundtrack and the video was shot to promote the film. Dana Carvey and Mike Myers show up as the duo who, at the time, were America’s favorite cable access hosts. Wayne and Garth were Cinderella fans? Guys, even Beavis and Butthead knew better than that!
Enjoy!
When a gang of outlaws starts hijacking freight wagons and then ransoming them back to their owners, government agent Steve Langtry (Charles Starrett) is sent to investigate. He both goes undercover as an inexperienced traveler and as the masked Durango Kid. As always, he is accompanied by Smiley Burnette. In this installment, Smiley tries to invent a machine that can find silver and he also sings a few songs. His backing band, The Lone Star Cowboys, follow him everywhere that he goes but they don’t actually get involved in the action.
This is another Durango Kid movie, with all of the usual horse chases and shootouts. The same action montage that started Phantom Valley also starts this movie. As always, Charles Starrett is convincing when riding a horse or shooting a gun.
What sets this Durango Kid movie apart from the others is the main villain. Dr. Middleton (played by a regular member of the Durango Kid stock company, Fred F. Sears) appears to be a kindly man who serves as a middleman between the citizens and the outlaws. Actually, he is working with the outlaws and receives a commission of every ransom that he negotiates. The reason he can get away with it is because he’s drugged the Sheriff (George Cheseboro)! He attempts to drug Durango too but luckily, Smiley drinks the water instead.
While it won’t convert anyone who isn’t already a fan of the genre or the character, this is another entertaining outing for the Durango Kid.
Serenity in Murder was the first single released off of Slayer’s 6th studio album, Diving Intervention. Tom Araya said that the songs on the album were largely inspired by what he was watching on television at the time. Both the song and the video for Serenity in Murder appear to have been inspired by the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Director Jon Reiss also did videos for Nine Inch Nails, Type O Negative, Danzig, and Diamanda Girls.
Remember when everyone’s parents were scared to death of finding cassettes from bands like Slayer and Anthrax in their child’s music collection?
Enjoy!
There’s trouble in Phantom Valley. The ranchers who founded the town are increasingly at odds with the newly arrived homesteaders. Each side blames the other for the tensions. Marshal Steve Collins (Charles Starrett) is sent to investigate who is responsible for all of the trouble but, when two people are murdered, it is up Steve’s alter ego, the masked Durango Kid, to investigate and solve the murders. Helping him out is his ever-loyal sidekick, Smiley Burnette. Smiley compares himself to Sherlock Holmes, walks around with a magnifying glass, and sings a few songs.
This Durango Kid film opens with a exciting montage of cattle stampedes, shoot-outs, floods, and horse chases. Even though it’s almost all stock footage that appeared in a countless number of other B-movies, it’s still exciting to watch. Despite the opening montage, there’s still less stock footage than usual in Phantom Valley. The emphasis is instead on the Durango Kid as a detective, trying to solve a stone-cold whodunit. It makes for an interesting change of pace and the Durango Kid gets to show off his intelligence along with his shooting and horse riding skills. Charles Starrett is convincing as a detective. Even if he is trying to solve the case a century before finger printing, The Durango Kid knows that hand-writing is just as easy a way to identity a culprit. Smiley Burnette, as usual, handles the comedic relief and the singing. I could have done without the songs but Smiley trying to use a magnifying glass and losing his temporary position as the town’s marshal to a child will always be good for a laugh.
Phantom Valley was a welcome change of pace for the Durango Kid. Western fans will find much to appreciate.
Rest in Peace, C.J. Snare. The lead singer of FireHouse passed away on April 5th.
FireHouse is interesting in that it was a glam metal band that hit it big right before the start of the Grunge revolution. While a lot of other glam metal bands, many of which had been around far longer than FireHouse, tried to change their sound to compete with Nirvana and the other Seattle superstars, FireHouse stuck with its glam metal roots.
This video was directed by Nigel Dick, who has done music videos for practically everyone.
Years ago, Bill Donner (George Cheseboro) double-crossed the other members of the Selby Gang and ran off with all of their stolen gold. Now, Donner is blind and half-crazy. When he says that he hid the gold in the ghost town of Shadeville, the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett), Smiley Burnette, and Sheriff Dodge (Stanley Andrews) ride off to find it.
Shadeville is long abandoned and, as the three men spend the night in a deserted saloon, Smiley is worried about ghosts. The Durango Kid tells the story of the first time he met the Selby Gang. The next morning, they discover that they are not the only ones who have come to Shadeville to look for the gold.
Like many of the later Durango Kid movies, Streets of Ghost Town is mostly made up of stock footage to Starrett’s earlier films. This was a cost-cutting technique on the part of Columbia Pictures but it actually works because the flashbacks were always to the horse chases and the gunfights that the audience came to see in the first place. In the days before home video and cable, those scenes were probably still new to many of the people sitting in the theater.
Starrett always made for a good hero and Smiley Burnett’s comic relief never took away from the films’s storylines. This outing features a great scene where Durango shoots a skull in the dark just to let anyone watching him know that he’s a good shot. I also enjoyed George Cheseboro’s manic performance as a man who really loves his gold. Despite all of the stock footage, Streets of Ghost Town is still an above average Durango Kid film, predictable but entertaining if you’re a fan of the genre.
Through the Shattered Lens