Category Archives: Film Review

Texas Panhandle (1945, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Secret Service agent Steve Buckner (Charles Starrett) is told by his boss that his activities as the Durango Kid have led some in the Agency to suspect that Steve is himself an outlaw.  Even after Steve explains that he only takes on the Durango Kid identity when he needs to step outside of the law to protect innocent people, Steve is still suspended pending an investigation.

With nothing better to do, Steve rides off to the Texas panhandle, where he learns that outlaws have been robbing settlers and stealing government gold.  Working as the Durango Kid, Steve discovers that it’s not just outlaws that are targeting the new arrivals but it’s also the corrupt head of the local land office, Ace Gatlin (Forest Taylor).  Helping out Steve are settler Tex Harding and Cannonball (Dub Taylor), who works at the saloon and sings a few songs.

This is a standard Durango Kid film.  It has all the usual gunfights and horse chases but it doesn’t have Smiley Burnette.  Dub Taylor takes Smiley’s place as the comedic sidekick and, while Taylor isn’t bad, he’s still no Smiley Burnette.  Dub Taylor’s characters were usually more buffoonish than the clever helpers played by Smiley Burnette and, as a result, the Durango Kid movies with Taylor feel more juvenile than the ones with Smiley.  That’s the case here.

This installment is interesting because it reveals that Steve’s superiors knew about his Durango Kid side hustle and were as a confused about why he needed it as everyone else was.  Steve reveals he would rather lose his job than give up being Durango.  Luckily, at the end of the movie, he gets a telegram telling him that the investigation is over and he’s been reinstated with the Secret Service.  All’s well that ends well.

Challenge of the Range (1949, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On the frontier, someone is raiding the homes of ranchers like Jim (Henry Hall) and Judy Barton (Paula Raymond).  The Homeowners Association summons Steve Roper (Charles Starrett) to bring a stop to the raids.  Everyone suspects that Cal Matson (Steve Darrell) and his son, Rob (Billy Halop), are behind  the raids but Steve, as the Durango Kid, discovers that a third party is trying to set everyone at war with each other for his own benefit.

The entry in the Durango Kid series was Charles Starrett’s 103rd western.  It’s not a particularly distinguished entry, relying heavily on stock footage.  I did find the idea of the film’s bad guy trying to manipulate the Bartons and the Matsons into destroying each other to be interesting but the movie doesn’t do much with it and the identity of main villain will be obvious to anyone who watches the film.  There is one good scene where Steve disarms three bad guys and then makes them walk all the way back to town without their boots on.  Steve doesn’t mess around.

Smiley Burnette provides the comic relief and a few songs.  This time, Smiley’s a dime store writer researching his next book.  Musically, he is accompanied by The Sunshine Boys.  103 movies in and Smiley still hasn’t figure out that Steve and Durango are one of a kind.

Pecos River (1951, directed by Fred F. Sears)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

College student Jack Mahoney (Jock Mahoney) returns to his hometown on the frontier to pay a surprise visit to his father, Old Henry (Edgar Dearing).  Old Henry owns a local stagecoach line and is being targeted by outlaws.  When Jack reaches his father’s house, he discovers that someone has shot Henry in the back.  With the help of Steve Baldwin (Charles Starrett) and Betty Coulter (Anne James), two of Henry’s employees, Jack Mahoney tries to bring his father’s killers to justice.

Also helping is the masked Durango Kid, who tells Jack that Henry was an old friend of his.  Durango, who is never present at the same time as Steve for some reason, teaches Jack how to handle a gun.  When Steve is framed for murder, Durango works even harder to help bring the outlaws to justice.

This late Durango Kid entry has more of an edge that some of the other Durango films.  Both Durango and Jack are out for vengeance and their grim determination sets this one apart from some of Durango’s other, more jokey adventures.

Even with Durango in a serious mood, Smiley Burnette is around to provide some humor.  This time, Smiley is a traveling “specs specialist” who goes from town to town and sells people glasses.  (He also sings two songs while accompanied by Harmonica Bill.)  At the end of the movie, Smiley breaks the fourth wall, puts on a pair of glasses that he says allow him to see the future, and he lets us know whether or not Durango, Jack, and Betty are going to be safe.  Smiley says that he can see himself singing but he can’t hear the song because he only has the glasses.  “Looks like a good song, too.”

One final note: this movie actually features Jock Mahoney in two roles.  Not only does he play college student Jack Mahoney but he was also Charles Starrett’s stunt double in the movie’s action scenes.

The Films of 2024: Bleeding Love (dir by Emma Westenberg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bleeding Love opens with a father (Ewan McGregor) driving his pickup truck across the desert.  Sitting next to him is his 20 year-old daughter (Clara McGregor).

Over the course of Bleeding Love, we come to know quite a lot about these two.  We know that the Father is divorced from the Daughter’s mother and that he has since remarried and has started a second family.  We know that the Daughter has never met her Father’s new wife.  We know that the Father has been sober for several years and now regularly attends AA, where he talks about the many regrets that continue to haunt him.  We know that the Daughter grew up both loving her Father and also being scared of the way he would get when he was drunk.  We know the Father is a landscaper.  We know the Daughter is a painter who feels like she has lost whatever once inspired her.  Father follows the rules.  Daughter shoplifts tiny bottles of liquor from a gas station.  Father talks a lot because he’s not sure what to say.  Daughter is often silent for the same reason.  Father is concerned about Daughter.  Daughter barely survived and overdose just a few hours before Father announced they were going to see a friend of his.  

We learn a lot about the Father and the Daughter but we never learn their names.  (Father calls Daughter by her childhood nickname of “Turbo,” even though she specifically asks him not to.)  They’re meant to be universal characters, standing in for all fathers and daughters who are trying to figure out how to relate to each other.  Appropriately enough, the characters are played by an actual father-daughter team, Ewan and Clara McGregor.  (Clara also had a hand in writing and producing the film.)

Bleeding Love follows Father and Daughter as they drive across the desert.  (Father has told Daughter that they’re just visiting an old friend but what Daughter doesn’t know is that old friend also runs a drug rehab.)  Along the way, they sometimes argue and they sometimes bond, especially over the music playing on the radio.  (There’s a reason why this film is named after a Leona Lewis song.)  They meet the usual collection of eccentrics that always tend to populate road movies like this.  I liked Kim Zimmer’s performance as Elsie, the driver of a tow truck who takes Father and Daughter to her cousin’s birthday party.  (At the party, Daughter tricks a man in a clown suit into giving her beer.)  I also liked the performance of Vera Bulder, playing a prostitute named Tommy who helps Father and Daughter after the latter gets bitten by a spider.  Not everyone on the road is as friendly as Elsie or Tommy, as both Father and Daughter eventually discover.

When Bleeding Love first started, I was a bit skeptical as to whether or not the film would work.  There are a few moments where the film does seem to be trying a bit too hard to force an emotional response from the viewer.  However, both McGregors are strong, likable, and sympathetic in their roles and their natural chemistry as father-and-daughter goes a long way towards making the relationship of their characters in the film feel real and poignant.  Ewan pours himself into a scene where he talks about his past mistakes while Clara plays Daughter as someone who is angry and impulsive but not stupid.  I related to Daughter and her relationship with her Father.  There’s a lot of emotional truth to be found in their sometimes angry, sometime funny conversations on the road. 

Thanks to Clara and Ewan McGregor, Bleeding Love works as a portrait of regret and addiction and a celebration of the bond between child and parent.

 

Defiance (1980, directed by John Flynn)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Serving out a six-month suspension, Merchant Seaman Tommy Campbell (Jan-Michael Vincent) rents an apartment on New York’s Lower East Side and passes the time painting and trying to learn Spanish in hope of getting assigned to a ship that is heading to Panama.

Tommy just wants to be left alone but he finds himself being drawn into the close-knit neighborhood.  He becomes friends with Carmine (Danny Aiello) and more than friends with his upstairs neighbor (Theresa Saldana).  He becomes a mentor to a street kid (Fernando Lopez) who lives with a punch-drunk boxer named called Whacko (Lenny Montana).  Abe (Art Carney), who owns the local bodega, agrees to let Tommy use his phone.

Tommy also finds himself drawing the attention of Angel Cruz (Rudy Ramos), head of the local street gang.  Tommy doesn’t want to get involved in any trouble.  He just wants to serve his suspension and sail to Panama.  But with Angel and his gang terrorizing the neighborhood and even robbing a church bingo game, Tommy and his friends finally stand up to the gang.

Defiance is more intelligent and realistic than many of the other urban vigilante movies that came out in the 70s and 80s.  Tommy never becomes a cold-blooded killer, like Charles Bronson did in the Death Wish films.  Instead, he spends most of the film trying to stay out of trouble and, when he does stand up for himself and the neighborhood, he does so realistically.  He fights the gang members but he doesn’t set out to the kill them.  About as deliberately destructive as he and Carmine get is that they destroy Angel’s car.  Rather than being a typical vigilante movie, Defiance is a portrait of a neighborhood where everyone takes care of everyone else.  Angel and his gang mistake the neighborhood’s kindness for weakness.  The neighborhood proves them wrong.

Defiance stars two actors who never quite got their due.  Theresa Saldana’s promising career was derailed when she was attacked and nearly killed by a deranged stalker in 1982.  Though she recovered and went on to do a lot of television, she never became the star that she should have.  Jan-Michael Vincent did become a star in the 70s and 80s but he later became better-known for his struggles with drugs and alcohol.  Both of them are very good in Defiance and leave you thinking about the careers that they could have had if things had just gone differently.

The Films of 2024: The Mummy Murders (dir by Colin Bressler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Alexis (Leila Anastasia Scott) is a San Antonio news reporter who, while sitting in a small cafe, is approached by a man named Joe (Jason Scarbrough).

At first, Joe just seems like an appreciative fan of Alexis’s reporting, albeit a bit of creepy and pushy one.  But it’s only after Joe sits down, removes his glasses, and starts to speak about his life to Alexis that the truth becomes apparent.  Joe says that he’s the serial killer who has been terrorizing San Antonio for the past few months.  His trademark is that he mummifies the bodies of his victims.  At first skeptical and then increasingly disturbed, Alexis listens as Joe calmly discusses his life, from his childhood as the son of a mortician to his time in the Army, to his current life as a killer.  As the conversation continues, it becomes apparent that Joe has a connection to Alexis and her family.

First released on January 2nd (and therefore, the first film of 2024), The Mummy Murders is a low-budget serial killer film that was filmed on location in San Antonio.  I have to admit that I’m a bit weary of serial killer films, just because there have been so many of them that they can sometimes feel rather interchangeable.  There’s only so many times you can sit through someone giving a long-winded explanation of their motives and their techniques before you start to wonder what the point of it all truly is.  Personally, I am of the opinion that Lars Von Trier pushed the serial killer genre to its logical conclusion with The House That Jack Built.  Matt Dillon plunging into the abyss was not only a fitting end for his character but also a sign that we had learned just about everything that there was to learn about what makes a serial killer tick.  There’s nothing left to discover.

That said, when taken on its own terms, The Mummy Murders is effectively creepy.  Again, it’s an extremely low budget movie and, towards the end of the film, the boom mic makes a presumably uninvited appearance.  There’s some holes in the film’s plot and I took issue with a lot of the choices that Alexis made throughout the film.  But Jason Scarbrough gives an effectively unhinged performance as Joe and the film deserves a lot of credit for not trying to make him into some sort of erudite, witty Hannibal Lecter-style murderer.  Instead, Joe is a believable creep who takes pride in his crimes because they’re the only thing for which he’s ever shown any ability.  Joe looks at both Alexis and the audience with a thousand-yard state, leaving little doubt that there’s zero room for kindness or empathy in Joe’s death-obsessed mind.  In an especially creepy moment, Joe talks about his excitement when, as a pre-teen, he discovered that the body of a girl on whom he had a crush had been brought to his father’s mortuary.  It’s icky and it’s creepy but it’s probably a more realistic portrayal of the killer’s sick mindset than what is found in most films.

As a final note, The Mummy Murders was shot on location in San Antonio.  San Antonio’s a lovely city.  More films should shoot down there.

Danger Zone (1996, directed by Allan Eastman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Framed on charges of dumping toxic waste, Morgan (Billy Zane) accepts a CIA mission to travel to the fictional African country of Zambeze and to track down his former friend, Jim Scott (Robert Downey, Jr.).  Scott is an ex-CIA agent who faked his own death and who is now leading a revolution against the oppressive government of Zambeze.  Scott knows the location of several barrels of uranium.  Also searching for the uranium is the ruthless Mr. Chang (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa).  Morgan teams up with Dr. Kim Woods (Lisa Collins) but soon discovers that he has to be careful of who to trust.

There is a surprisingly lot of talent in the cast of this film.  Along with Zane, Downey, Collins, and Tagawa, Ron Silver appears as the shady political operative who joins Morgan in Zambeze.  The cast may be good but it doesn’t take long to see that everyone in this film was there mostly for the money.  No one brings their A-game to Danger Zone and both Downey and Silver often look like they’re struggling to deliver their lines with a straight face.  Downey, especially, gives a self-amused performance, delivering his lines in a thick and indecipherable Southern accent.

(It is easy to forget that there was a time when Robert Downey, Jr’s career was regularly cited as being the ultimate Hollywood cautionary tale.  Everyone knew he was talented but, in the 90s, his well-publicized struggle with drug addiction and the time that he spent in jail made him practically uninsurable and unhirable.  He ended up appearing in a lot of films like this one before he eventually got clean and reinvented himself as the face of the MCU.  In the 90s, most people would probably have been shocked to hear that Downey would eventually win an Oscar and receive a standing ovation as he accepted it.)

Danger Zone does have some good action scenes.  The movie ends with an attack on a train that is actually pretty exciting.  Unfortunately, the rest of the film suffers from bad acting and an incoherent plot that makes Danger Zone almost impossible to follow.  You can fly into the Danger Zone but you won’t want to stay.

The Films of 2024: Sunrise (dir by Andrew Baird)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the Pacific Northwest, animals are being killed and their blood is being drained.  Some of the locals theorize that it’s the work of the Red Coat, a legendary creature that demands constant sacrifices to keep it at bay.

Reynolds (Guy Pearce, with a wild preacherman beard) doesn’t care about the Red Coat.  He’s more upset about the fact that he and his buddies are feeling displaced in America.  He’s been driven to rage by the fact that there’s a family named Loi living in his community.  He hates immigrants.  He blames minorities for every problem that America is facing.  He says “ain’t” instead of “is not” because that’s the way this film lets us know that its characters are supposed to be blue collar.

Reynolds has murdered Mr. Loi (Chike Chin) and he’s targeting Yan Loi (Crystal Yu) and her teenage son, Edward (William Gao).  Fortunately, the Loi Family has a protector.  Fallon (Alex Pettyfer) wanders through the misty countryside with a grim look on his face and a darkly-colored wardrobe that is designed to let us know that he’s seeking vengeance.  Along with defending the Loi Family, Fallon has a personal reason for seeking vengeance on Reynolds.  Fallon also has an insatiable need for blood….

Sunrise is a somber, slowly-paced, and rather shallow-minded film.  It takes itself very seriously and it definitely wants you to know that it has important stuff on its mind, unlike those other vampire films that just seek to be entertaining.  Of course, as any student of the grindhouse knows, an entertaining film can often be the most effective form of propaganda around.  People aren’t going to think about your message is they’re bored out of their mind.

At times, Sunrise seems to think that it’s the first film to ever use vampirism as a way to comment on current events, which I’m sure would be news to Bram Stoker, Jean Rollin, Anne Rice, Stephen King, Kim Newman, John Carpenter, Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola, Spike Lee, Abel Ferrara, Guillermo del Toro, Kathyrn Bigelow, David Conenberg, Bill Gunn, Dan Curtis, and just about anyone else who has ever written or directed anything that involved a vampire.  Reynolds rants and rave about his hated of immigrants in speeches that are so overwritten and so florid that they verge on parody.  (At one point, he saps at a deputy for not drinking an American beer.)  His character is a fever dream of what Leftists think blue collar workers sound like when they’re not cheering their favorite football team or laughing about climate change.  I suppose the filmmakers deserve some credit for having enough discipline to realize that having Reynolds shout, “This is MAGA country!” would be a bit too heavy-handed for even this film but one can tell that the temptation was definitely there.

At first, I thought that the film’s cinematography would be its saving grace but eventually, I got bored with all of the artfully composed shots of the misty northwest.  There’s really not much difference between Sunrise‘s visuals and the visuals of the Twilight films.  Then I thought that Guy Pearce’s intensity might elevate the film but then I realized that Pearce has played this same character several times and he’s been more interesting in other films.  As for Alex Pettyfer, he’s just as boring here as he was in Magic Mike.  In Magic Mike, he at least danced.

Interestingly, this film — with its portrayal of rampant racism in the American northwest — is an Irish production that was shot not in Washington or Oregon but instead in Belfast.  That perhaps explains why the characters often sound like they learned how to speak by watching American cop shows on television.  Personally, I am not amongst those who feels that people should only be allowed to make movies about their own countries.  I don’t believe in limiting the imagination in that style.  As an American of Irish (and Italian and Spanish) descent, I think that an American filmmaker would be totally justified in directing a film about Ian Paisley’s followers terrorizing the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.  (They could even shoot it around Austin, Texas.)  Or maybe someone could make a movie about that Irish basketball team who refused to shake hands with an opposing team because the team was from Israel.  All’s fair.

Roaring Rangers (1946, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Another frontier town is in trouble.

Sherriff Jeff Conner (Jack Rockwell) is having trouble ridding his town of outlaws so his son, Larry, (Mickey Kuhn) writes a letter to his hero to ask for help.  He addresses the letter to “Durango Kid, Texas.”  That’s all it takes for Steve Randall (Charles Starrett) and his sidekick, Smiley Burnette, to show up in town.

Steve and Smiley apply to be deputies but Sheriff Conner explains that someone is circulating a petition to get him fired.  Steve dresses up as the Durango Kid and pressures the citizens to give the Sheriff another chance.  Realizing that the Durango Kid is making them look bad, the outlaws decide to dress up one of their own as Durango and make the Kid look bad.  With the town turning on Durango, will Durango and Smiley be able to save Sheriff Conner from an assassination attempt?

This Durango Kid film is different from the rest of the series in that, for once, Steve is hired to be a deputy instead of a sheriff.  This really is Sheriff Conner’s story, as he tries to win the respect of the town and keep its citizens safe, even while his own brother (Ed Cassidy) is working with the outlaws.  There are all the usual horse chase and shootouts but this time, Durango and Smiley are mostly around to provide support to a man who is trying to do the right thing.  B-western fans will enjoy it.

Smiley sings a few songs, as always.  This time, musical accompaniment is provided by Merle Travis and his Bronco Busters.

May Positivity: New Hope (dir by Rodney Ray)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2012 film, New Hope, is narrated by Michael Evans (Samuel Davis).

Michael is a seventeen year-old preacher’s kid whose father, Alex (Will Schwab), has just gotten a job in the small town of New Hope.  As a result, Michael has to move in the middle of his senior year.  (Yikes, not fun!)  He’s not happy about that and, to make things even worse, Michael’s father has talked the high school basketball coach, Tom Miller (Reg Rob), into putting Michael on the team.

(Is it normal for coaches to put someone on a team without having them first try out?  The basketball team is in the playoffs, after all.)

Michael tries to explain to Coach Miller that he’s not that good of a basketball player.  Coach Miller replies that he doesn’t really care whether or not Michael is a good player.  Instead, he wants Michael on the team so that Michael can be a role model for the younger players.  Coach Miller assumes that, as a preacher’s kid, Michael will automatically be a good influence.

Uhmm …. has the coach ever met any preacher’s kids before?

Seriously, I live in Texas and, when I was growing up, my family moved all over the Southwest.  I have known a lot of preacher’s kids and, for the most part, almost all of them were wild.  Even the ones who were religious and planning on going into the family business were wild.  When you’re a teenager, your natural instinct is to rebel against whatever it is that your parents are about and, as a result, preacher’s kids usually have a lot to rebel against.  There’s a reason why everyone automatically understands what that Sweet Talkin’ Son Of A Preacher Man song is about.

And even if Michael isn’t wild (and, because this is a faith-based film, Michael is a surprisingly well-behaved high school student), how is it fair to tell anyone that they have to be a role model for a bunch of people that they barely know?  Michael’s only been a student at his new school for a day.

Michael quickly finds himself in conflict with the team’s star player, Lucas Green (Ben Davies, giving the closest thing that the film has to a good performance).  Lucas’s brother also played for the team until he committed suicide.  Lucas, with his unresolved issues of anger, feels that Michael tying to take his brother’s place.  Lucas gets even angrier when Michael starts to date his dead brother’s girlfriend, Jasmine (Perry Frost).  Meanwhile, Michael’s parents get upset when they discover a condom wrapper in his jacket.  Oh, you silly parents!  Michael isn’t a typical preacher’s kid.  The only reason he took the condom out of the wrapper was so he could throw it away.

(Seriously, Lucas seems more like a preacher’s kid than Michael.)

There’s a whole genre of faith-based films that use sports as a metaphor for having faith and not questioning authority figures and New Hope is definitely a part of that genre.  Michael has no real desire to be on the basketball team but both his father and his coach want him on the team so Michael goes with it.  It’s hard not to feel that Michael really needs to stand up for himself.  The film is all a bit too long (the film clocks in at over two hours) and unrealistic.  It’s a film that tries to tackle all of the important issues of growing up but it does so in far too ham-fisted a manner.  Personally, I think Michael should have quit the team, bought a beret and a pack of Clove cigarettes, and taken a creative writing class.  He would have been much happier and no one would have expected him to be a role model.  There’s nothing wrong with trying different things and making your own decisions.  There’s nothing wrong with being a rebel.  That’s what being a teenager is supposed to be all about.