Guilty Pleasure No. 54: Solarbabies (dir by Alan Johnson)

Posted on April 26, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Solarbabies is a film that has a reputation. And it’s not a good one.

First released in 1986, Solarbabies is one of those post-Mad Max films that takes place in a post-apocalyptic desert society. There are no more trees. There is no more rain. Order is kept by force. The people are oppressed. Outsiders live in desert towns that have names like “Tiretown.” Children are forced to grow up in a combination of a prison and an orphanage. The orphanage’s Warden (played by Charles Durning) mourns for the way the world used to be, before it became a sun-drenched nightmare without plants or water. The fearsome Grock (Richard Jordan) makes sure that all of society’s rules are followed and the viewer knows he’s a bad guy because he wears a leather trench coat even when it’s over a 100 degrees outside. (Grock never sweats. If only the same could be said of the Warden.) The evil Professor Shandray (Sarah Douglas) experiments on living subjects. It’s a grim, grim world.

However, hope arrives in the form of a glowing orb! A ten year-old deaf boy named Daniel (Lukas Haas) finds the orb and, after regaining his ability to hear, he names it Bodhi. When Darstar (Adrian Pasdar) realizes that he can use Bodhi to protect the people of Tiretown, he steals the orb and runs off with it. Determined to retrieve Bodhi, Daniel chases after him

How will Daniel survive in the desert? Well, luckily, he’s not alone! Daniel was a member of the orphanage’s roller hockey team, the Solarbabies. Terra (Jami Gertz), Jason (Jason Patric), Metron (James LeGros), Rabbit (Claude Brooks), and Tug (Peter DeLuise) strap on their skates and roll out into the desert. Pursuing them is Grock and his stormtroopers.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the desert, an old man named Greentree (Frank Converse) hopes to help the world recover. Greentree looks like a thin version of Santa Claus and he hopes to bring rain and trees back to the Earth. Yes, his name is Greentree. There’s not really much room for subtlety in the world of Solarbabies.

Now, as I said at the beginning of this review, Solarbabies has a reputation. Today, it’s probably best known for being the film that nearly bankrupted Mel Brooks. Yes, that Mel Brooks. When Brooks originally signed on to produce Solarbabies, it was envisioned as being a low-budget sci-fi film that would not have any spectacular special effects. However, Brooks became convinced that Solarbabies had the potential to be a Star Wars-level hit so he increased the budget. He also brought in Alan Johnson to direct the film, despite the fact that Johnson was a choreographer who had only directed one other film and had no experience with science fiction. (Johnson’s previous film had been a remake of To Be Or Not To Be, which starred Brooks and featured Solarbabies’s Charles Durning in a supporting role). At Brooks’s insistence, the film was shot in Spain to save money. Unfortunately, no sooner had Johnson and the film’s cast arrived than Spain was hit by a series of unexpected storms that caused production to shut down. Even when the rain stopped, disagreements between Johnson and the cast delayed the film even further. The footage that was shot satisfied no one, leading to expensive reshoots. In the end, Mel Brooks invested close to $20 million dollars in the film, even taking a second mortgage out on his house. When the film was finally released, it was a critical and box office disaster, though Brooks later said that he did eventually break even after Solarbabies was released on DVD.

So, yes, Solarbabies has a bad reputation and it could be argued that it deserves it. Tonally, the film’s a mess. For a film that appears to have been made for a “family” audience, parts of the film are surprisingly violent Scenes of the Solarbabies playing LaCrosse and cheerfully crossing the desert are mixed with some surprisingly graphic scenes of Grock and Shandray torturing prisoners. Bodhi is a cute and glowing orb who gives Daniel back his hearing and then later brutally kills a lot of bad guys. Jason Patric, Jami Gertz, and Charles Durning all seem to be trying to take the film seriously while Richard Jordan and Sarah Douglas give performances that feel more appropriate for a Hammer horror film. Solarbabies is a bizarre mix of sincerity, sadism, and camp. Nothing about it makes much sense.

And yet….

Listen, I can’t help it. When I watched it last week, I enjoyed Solarbabies. For all of its many and obvious flaws, it’s a hard film not to like. It’s just so thoroughly ludicrous and messy that watching it becomes a rather fascinating viewing experience. It’s hard not to, at the very least, be entertained by the sight of the cast roller skating through the desert. A LaCrosse team battling futuristic Nazis for possession of a glowing orb that can cause rain to fall from a cloudless sky? As far as I’m concerned, it’s impossible not to enjoy that on some level.

Of course, I seem to be in the minority as far as that’s concerned. Alan Johnson never directed another movie after Solarbabies, though he did direct some of those really cool GAP commercials that aired in the early aughts. You know the ones that featured people enthusiastically dancing in khakis? That was him! Those commercials are kind of a guilty pleasure themselves. (Of course, because Mel Brooks nearly didn’t lose his house producing them, they’re not quite as infamous as Solarbabies.) But still, Johnson stared his directorial career by directing Charles Durning to an Oscar nomination in To Be Or Not To Be and he ended it by directing Durning in a box office flop. Well, no matter! I enjoyed Solarbabies and I don’t care who knows it.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

The Man From Utah (1934, directed by Robert N. Bradbury)

Posted on April 19, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

John Wayne is John Weston, the man from Utah. He’s a singing cowboy, the type who rides from town to town and sings to his horse while they’re crossing the range. John Wayne started his career in singing cowboy movies and he often complained that he wasn’t allowed to actually sing. Instead, his singing voice was always dubbed and it rarely matched his speaking voice. Audiences in 1934 may not have noticed but, for audiences today, there’s no way to hear John Weston sing and think, “That’s John Wayne.”

John Weston rides into town and guns down three bank robbers. The Marshal (George “Gabby” Hayes) is so impressed that he hires Weston and then sends him undercover into the local rodeo. The Marshal thinks the rodeo is corrupt because any rodeo rider who comes close to winning the prize money mysteriously dies of snakebite. That does seem suspicious. Weston discovers that Spike Barton (Edward Peil, Sr.) is murdering the riders and is planning on stealing the prize money for himself. Can the Man from Utah stop him without getting snakebit?

The Man From Utah features John Wayne in an early starring role, playing the type of character that he would later become famous for, the no-nonsense westerner who will do whatever he has to do to make sure justice is served. Though it would be another five years before Stagecoach made him a certifiable movie star, Wayne is already a confident hero in The Man From Utah. He only seems uncertain when he has to pretend to sing and it’s a good thing that John Ford helped him to leave the singing cowboy genre behind. If Wayne had entered Stagecoach singing a song to his horse, it would have been a much different movie.

The Man From Utah is also full of actual rodeo stock footage, most of which is exciting if you’re into that type of thing. The only problem is that most of the people at the rodeo are wearing modern clothing, making them seem out-of-place in a movie about the old west! Overall, though, The Man From Utah is a good and simple Western programmer and will be appreciated by fans of the genre.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Avengement (dir by Jesse V. Johnson)

Posted on April 18, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m not really sure if “Avengement” is actually a word but, regardless, that’s what Cain Burgess is determined to get. AVENGEMENT!

Martial artist Scott Adkins plays Cain in this 2019 British film. When we first meet Cain, he’s in prison but that quickly changes once he manages to escape. Cain heads to a pub, one that’s owned by his brother, Lincoln (Craig Faibrass). After he’s taken everyone in the pub hostage, we learn about how Cain not only came to be a prisoner but also how he ended up with some rather prominent facial scars. It turns out that Cain likes to tell a story and, for whatever reason, the gangsters are willing to sit around and listen. Through the use of flashbacks, we see how Cain went from being an innocent martial artist to being the most feared man in prison. We see how he learned to kill and how not even getting acid thrown in his face could slow him down. Cain’s a scary dude and he’s out for revenge! Or avengement!

Of course, we also can’t help but notice that a lot of Cain’s adventures feel as if they’ve been lifted from other British crime films. The talkative gangsters bring to mind the films of Guy Ritchie. A lengthy chase scene owes more than a little to the opening on Trainspotting. Even the fight in the pub owes a bit to the finale of Shaun of the Dead. It’s all a bit familiar but then again, that’s part of the appeal of the modern British crime thriller. We watch these films specifically for the posh villains and the pub fights and the often indecipherable dialogue. The familiarity is often exactly what the viewer is looking for. (That said, I was a little bit surprised by the lack of Russian mobsters wearing track suits. That was a missed opportunity.) I think the other reason why Americans, in particular, like British gangster films is the novelty of seeing that British gangsters can be just as unnecessarily violent as American gangsters. It’s nice to be reminded that America isn’t the only country that breeds violence.

Speaking of violence, Avengement is a very violent film and it’s also often a very bloody film. When you consider how much of the film takes place in prison, it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of stabbings. (What is somewhat surprising is that there are also a lot of stabbings outside of prison, even when there are guns nearby.) I’m usually not a fan of gratuitous violence but Avengement handles it all with a certain wit. The violence is so over-the-top that it’s hard not to suspect that the filmmakers are commenting on the excessive nature of other British gangster films. There’s a lengthy montage of Cain just fighting anyone who comes near him and it goes on for so long that it actually becomes somewhat humorous. It’s hard not to feel at least a little admiration for Cain’s determination to start a fight with every single person that he sees. He certainly doesn’t give up. Scott Adkins is a gymnast, along with being a martial artist, and there’s a grace to his movements that comes through even when the film is at its most brutal. Early on, I joked that the film would only work if its ultraviolent protagonist turned out to be likable and strangely enough, that’s exactly what happened. Scott Adkins, to my surprise, turned out to be not only an exciting fighter but also a pretty good actor. He shows enough screen presence in Avengement to make viewers hope that he’ll someday get a major action role.

Avengement is a ferocious but entertaining and unpretentious action film. Watch it. Experience it. Just don’t worry about trying to understand what everyone’s talking about. Just assume that everyone has a reason to want Cain dead and Cain has a reason to want the same for everyone else and there should not be any trouble at all.

The Drifter (1932, directed by William A. O’Connor)

Posted on April 18, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

“This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

This line, which has been recycled in so many western parodies, is actually used seriously in The Drifter, a forgotten western from the pre-code era. The line is delivered by Montana (Russell Hopton) and he’s speaking to a mysterious character known only as The Drifter (William Farnum).

The Drifter is a French-Canadian who has spent decades searching for his lost-lost brother but who is now ready to go into town, get work as a logger, and hopefully find a woman to marry. Along with a mysterious man who is named Whitey and who is played by Charles Sellon, The Drifter is hired to work for local lumber magnate, John McNary (Noah Beery). The Drifter impresses everyone with his good hearted ways and he falls in love with McNary’s daughter, Bonnie (Phyllis Barrington). Unfortunately, Phyllis is already dating Paul LaTour (Bruce Warren), who is her father’s main business rival. But before The Drifter can concentrate on winning Phyllis away from LaTour and also solving the mystery of his own missing family, he has to deal with the most dangerous man in town, Montana. As Montana puts it, the town’s not big enough for both him and The Drifter.

The Drifter‘s story is potentially interesting but the low-budget, the shoddy production values, and a slow pace all conspire to do the film in. This was one of the countless western programmers that was produced in the early 30s. Like many of the other poverty row productions of the era, it starred an actor who had been huge during the silent era but who struggled to find work during the early years of the sound era. William Farnum started as a stage actor and as a protegee to Edwin Booth, who was largely considered to be America’s finest stage actor even if he was forever tainted by being the brother of presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Farnum’s very theatrical style of acting made him perfect for both Broadway and for the silent film era, a time when actors had to use big movements and dramatic facial expressions in order to convey their emotions. When the sound era came along, Farnum’s style was suddenly no longer in vogue and, unfortunately, it took him a while to adjust to working with sound. Even in a sound film like The Drifter where he had dialogue, Farnum gives the type of overly theatrical performance that was more common during the silent era. What’s interesting is that Farnum’s performance actually works for the character of The Drifter, who is meant to be an outsider who struggles to communicate with other people. Despite some implausible twists at the end, the rest of The Drifter isn’t as interesting.

Farnum eventually did adjust to the sound era and he became a respected character actor, playing many captains and many judges. In 1953, when he died at the age of 76, Hollywood turned out to pay their respects. Cecil B. DeMille and Paramount Picture co-founder Jesse B. Lasky served as pallbearers.

Hell-Fire Austin (1932, directed by Forrest Sheldon)

Posted on April 13, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Having just gotten out of the army after serving in World War I, Bouncer (Nat Pendleton) and his friend, “Hell-Fire” Austin (Ken Maynard), head out to find their fortune in the west. Austin claims that he’s an old west legend but, despite his claims, he still can’t get away with not paying his bill at a local café. Austin and Bouncer are arrested and sentenced to work on a chain gang.

Times are tough but they start to look up when businessman Mark Edmonds (Alan Roscoe) arranges for them to be set free, on the condition that they train his horse and then ride it to victory in an upcoming race. Edmonds wants the ranch that’s owned by Judy Brooks (Ivy Merton) and, in order to get it, he has to make sure that her horse, Tarzan, doesn’t win the race and the prize money that comes with it. The only problem with the plan is that Austin likes Tarzan and he’s a little partial to Judy as well.

Hell-Fire Austin is an amusing film. Like many of the early western stars, Ken Maynard was a former rodeo star who turned to the movies and he looked authentic jumping on and riding a horse. In Hell-Fire Austin, he and Nat Pendleton are a good comedy team, playing off of each other as only two friends who have been through both war and prison could. The comedy comes less from what they say and more from their attitude towards each other. They’re stuck with each other, no matter how much they might wish differently. Hell-Fire Austin is an extremely simple movie but fans of the genre should enjoy it. It’s post-World War I setting adds an extra element of meaning to the story, with Austin and Bouncer standing in for all the soldiers who, having seen terrible fighting in Europe, were now back in America and wondering what to do with their rest of their lives. Austin and Bouncer had west, hoping to find a life like the one they’ve seen in the movies. They find it but, of course, they have to go to prison first.

Ken Maynard was an actor who probably could have been nicknamed “Hell Fire” himself. He was a big star in the early days of Hollywood but his reputation for drinking too much and being egotistical and temperamental sabotaged his career and he ended up back where he began, doing rodeo tricks for Ringling Bros. He spent his last years living in a trailer, nearly forgotten and selling “memorabilia” that later turned out to be fake, a sad ending for an authentic cowboy.

Law of the Rio Grande (1931, directed by Forrest Sheldon)

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

I nearly didn’t review Law of the Rio Grande.

First, the only copies I could find were at the Internet Archive and on YouTube. The available copies run 48 minutes but according to the IMDb, Law of the Rio Grande originally had a 57-minute run time. If that number is correct, that means that the versions on the Internet Archive and YouTube are missing 9 minutes. Since there doesn’t appear to have been anything objectionable in the film (this is a 1931 b-western, after all), I’m going to guess that the 9-minutes were probably cut when the movie started playing on television in the 50s. That is something that happened to a lot of the old western programmers. Television was quick to buy them because they were cheap and they made for appropriate children’s programming but the movies were always edited for time and often, the original versions were lost.

Secondly, edited or not, Law of the Rio Grande is not very good. It was made, for a very low-budget, by Syndicate Pictures, a poverty row studio. The majority of the cast was made up of actors who had found success in the silent era but who never made the adjustment to the sound era. Though the actors have the right look to play cowboys, none of them know how to actually make dialogue sound convincing. There’s also a persistent sound of crackling static in the background of most of the scenes. I don’t know if that’s the fault of the film or if it’s just a bad upload but it’s obvious that the cast and crew of Law of the Rio Grande were not used to working with sound.

Despite the film’s title, the Rio Grande was nowhere to be seen in the version that I saw. Instead, the film is about two outlaws, Jim (Bob Custer) and Cookie (Harry Todd), who are determined to go straight. Jim and Cookie end up working for Colonel Lanning (Carlton S. King) and his daughter, Judy (Betty Mack). But then a former acquaintance known as the Blanco Kid (Edmund Cobb) shows up and threatens to reveal the truth about Jim’s background. It’s a typical western programmer, with the main message being you can’t escape your past but you can beat it up in a fair fight.

The kids probably loved it in 1931. Today, it’s mostly interesting as an example of one of Bob Custer’s final films. Custer was a legitimate rodeo star who went to Hollywood during the silent era and who had a lot of success because he looked authentic jumping on a horse. Like many silent era stars, he didn’t have to actually recite or even know his lines. He just had to be himself. Unfortunately, the sound era destroyed his career because, while he may have looked like a character from the old west, he didn’t sound like one. Unable to find work at the major studios, Custer ended up making movies like this one for studios like Syndicate Pictures. He retired from acting in 1936 and went on to become a building inspector for city of Los Angeles. It turned out that he was a better engineer than he wan actor and eventually, he named Chief Building Inspector for the city of Newport Beach, California. He passed away in 1974, nearly forty years after starring in his final film. He was 76 years old.

The Hard Hombre (1931, directed by Otto Brower)

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

In this short and comedic western, Hoot Gibson plays a cowboy who is so mild-mannered that his nickname is Peaceful. William “Peaceful” Patton is such a pacifist that he’s even named after the first Quaker, William Penn. When the movie starts, a group of cowboys are shooting at each other from opposite sides of a ravine. Patton rides into the middle of the fight and tells them to put down their guns and settle things peacefully. Everyone ignores him.

Patton has gotten a job in a neighboring town, working on the ranch of Senora Martini (Lina Basquette). Leaving behind his beloved mother (Jessie Arnold), Patton heads to the Martini ranch and he discovers that everyone is scared to death of him. That’s because Patton looks just like a notorious outlaw known as The Hard Hombre. The Hard Hombre has killed a man for every year that he’s been alive. Realizing that he can use this to bring peace to the town and to help Senora Martini get her cattle back from rival rancher Joe Barlowe (G. Raymond Nye), Patton pretends to be the Hard Hombre.

Soon, everyone in town is getting along and Senora Martini has fallen in love with the man that she thinks is the Hard Hombre. But then, the Hard Hombre actually does show up in town! Even worse, Peaceful’s mother also shows up and wants to know why everyone thinks her son is a killer!

With a 64 minute running time, this low-budget programmer isn’t bad. It pokes fun at every western cliché, showing that even in the early days of Hollywood, the conventions of the western were already set in stone. The film gets a surprising amount of comedic mileage from people acting scared of the mild-looking and acting Hoot Gibson. Gibson was one of the earliest western stars, playing heroes who used their wits and who rarely carried a gun. Appearing in a film for a poverty row studio was a step down for Gibson but his casting still pays off in That Hard Hombre and he gives a good performance as a cowboy who just wants everyone to get along and to make his mother proud.

Film Review: Death on the Nile (dir by Kenneth Branagh)

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The main mystery at the heart of Kenneth Branagh’s adaption of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile is not who committed the film’s murders but just how seriously we, the audience, are meant to take what we’re watching.

In this much-delayed (by COVID and a cast full of actors who could not escape personal scandal) follow-up to 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh again plays the eccentric detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot is again in an exotic land, this time Egypt. And again, circumstances have conspired to isolate him and a group of wealthy and glamorous suspects from the rest of the world. In Murder on the Orient Express, everyone was stuck on a train. Here, they are stuck on a boat. Admittedly, the boat provides a nice view of the pyramids but, eventually, even those testaments to engineering seem to be mocking the people stuck on the boat. The pyramids, after all, have survived for centuries. The same cannot be said for the people who have come to see them. Over the course of the film, there are several murders. (Indeed, Death on the Nile is significantly bloodier than Murder on the Orient Express and, unlike what happened on the Orient Express, the majority of the victims have done nothing to deserve their grisly fate.) Like Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile is based on a novel by Agatha Christie. Branagh changes a few details from Christie’s novel, which is understandable since it’s important to keep the audience guessing. For instance, Bouc (Tom Bateman), who was Poirot’s assistant in Murder on the Orient Express, returns in Branagh’s film version and provides some continuity between the two films. It also provides a nice side-mystery as the audience tries to figure out how Poirot and Bouc could just happen to run into each other in Egypt. Fear not, the film offers up a solution.

As is to be expected, the victims and the suspects are brought to life by a cast of stars and familiar character actors, all of whom act up a storm. Some, of course, do a better job of embracing the melodrama than others. Armie Hammer and Gal Gadot play a glamorous couple and, regardless of how we feel about Hammer as a human being, it works because Gadot and Hammer both look they could have stepped out of a sophisticated, 1930s RKO comedy. (Hammer’s stiff line readings, which are totally appropriate for his character, would actually be a highlight of the film if he wasn’t Armie Hammer.) Russell Brand is oddly subdued as the doctor with the secret while Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders show up to keep all of the British comedy fanatics happy. Sophie Okonedo plays a jazz singer and how you react to her character will depend on how much patience you have for anachronistic musical numbers. (There’s a surprisingly large amount of them.) Annettte Bening plays Bouc’s mother and there’s really not a subtle moment to be found in her performance but again, it works because Death on the Nile is not a particularly subtle film. It’s a film that demands a certain amount of calculated overacting and Bening is enough of a veteran performer to deliver exactly what the film needs.

No, there’s nothing particularly subtle about Death on the Nile but then again, that’s always been a part of Kenneth Branagh’s appeal. Branagh’s endless (and often justified) faith in his own abilities as a director and an actor means that Branagh is willing to do things that others would avoid, whether that means making a 4-hour version of Hamlet or a black-and-white film about growing up in Belfast or, for that matter, a gaudy Agatha Christie adaptation in which he plays the lead detective. Death on the Nile is a celebration of melodrama, beautiful people, and nice clothes. Even the fact that the Egyptian backdrops are obviously phony works to the film’s advantage, giving the proceedings a bit of a retro, Hollywood studio system feel. At its best, Death on the Nile is an homage to old-fashioned camp..

And yet, there are hints that Branagh means for the film to be something more. The films opens with a prologue, one that is not included in Christie’s book or in anything else that Christie wrote about Poirot. The prologue, which is filmed in black-and-white, features Poirot getting terribly wounded during World War I and growing his famous mustache to cover his scars. We also discover that the great love of Poirot’s life was a nurse who died during the war. Later, while solving the murder, Poirot often talks about how he has shut himself away from the world, never wanting to risk falling in love again. There’s even a hint that Poirot has fallen for one of the suspects. Branagh’s a good actor and can obviously pull off Poirot’s inner turmoil but those little serious asides still feel out of place in a film that features Armie Hammer and Russell Brand as romantic rivals. It’s hard not to wonder if Branagh is in on the joke or if he’s seriously attempting to use Poirot as a symbol for an alienated and traumatized society.

One could argue that Poirot uses his mustache to hide from the world in much the same way that many people have spent the past two years using their masks to hide from COVID. Except, of course, Death on the Nile was actually filmed three years ago, before anyone had even heard of COVID-19. The film was first delayed by the theaters shutting down. It was delayed a second time by the scandals surrounded Armie Hammer. (Indeed, this film will probably be the last major studio release to feature Armie Hammer.) It was finally released in February of this year and, within a month, it was on Hulu and HBOMax. It didn’t exactly kill at the box office but I think Death on the Nile will be rediscovered over the years. It’s a minor entry in Branagh’s filmography but it’s still enjoyably silly, regardless of whether that was Branagh’s intention or not.

The Great Missouri Raid (1951, directed by Gordon Douglas)

Posted on April 7, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

During the Civil War, brothers Frank (Wendell Corey) and Jesse James (Macdonald Carey) leave the family farm and fight as Confederate guerillas under the leadership of the infamous William Quantrill. When the war ends with the Confederacy’s defeat, Frank, Jesse, and their friend Cole Younger (Bruce Bennett) return home to Missouri and discover that their town is being ruled over the tyrannical Major Towbridge (Ward Bond). With their farms in ruin and having little opportunity to make honest money, the James Brothers and the Younger Brothers soon resort to robbing banks and trains. It’s their revenge against not only the soldier occupying their land but also the bankers and land barons who have been taking advantage of their friends and family members. The James-Younger Gang become heroes to economically oppressed people everywhere.

From the minute that they arrive home, Towbridge is determined to imprison the James brothers. Not only does he distrust them because of their past with Quantrill but he also blames them for the death of his own brother. Towbridge becomes so obsessed that he even leaves the army so that he can pursue Frank and Jesse as a private detective. Even as it appears that Jesse might be on the verge of settling down and abandoning his criminal life, he still has to deal with unexpected visitors like the Ford brothers.

The story of Frank and Jesse James inspired several films, some of which were better than others. Directed with a good eye for detail by Gordon Douglas, The Great Missouri Raid tells the familiar story with enough skill to be watchable but it never reaches the classic status of Walter Hill’s The Long Riders.

The main problem is that both Wendell Corey and Macdonald Carey come across as being almost too civilized as the James brothers. The film is obviously sympathetic to the James brothers and, as westerns tended to do in the 50s, it ignores some of the less heroic details of their lives of outlaws. (The film, for instance, doesn’t mention that the James brothers were probably already outlaws before the Civil War started and it’s doubtful that a modern film would be as sympathetic to two men who left home to fight for the Confederacy.) Usually, though, even the most sympathetic film portrayals of the James brothers still portray them as being the type of people who you wouldn’t necessarily want to meet while riding the trail. Wendell Corey and Macdonald Carey play Frank and Jesse as being so nice that it’s hard to believe that they could have even rode with Quantrill, let along the Younger brothers. They’re the most reasonable outlaws this side of the Mississippi. Bruce Bennett and Bill Williams are more believable as the rough and tough Cole and Jim Younger.

Not surprisingly, the film is stolen by Ward Bond. Bond usually played reasonable authority figures for John Ford and Frank Capra. As Major Towbridge, though, he’s cast as a martinet who allows his obsession with James brothers to turn him into a fanatic. For those who are used to only seeing Bond cast as a fair cop or a tough-but-fair military officer, his performance in The Great Missouri Raid is a revelation.

The Long Riders is the best movie about the James Gang but, for western fans, The Great Missouri Raid should be entertaining if not definitive.

The Fighting Marshal (1931, directed by D. Ross Lederman)

Posted on April 6, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

The town of Silver City has a new marshal. He’s tough, no-nonsense, and an expert marksman. He is exactly what it needed to clean up the town and he is also a complete fraud. The marshal is actually Tim Benton (played by Tim McCoy), an escaped convict who was doing time after being framed for the murder of his father. Seeking revenge on the men who framed him and who stole his family’s silver mine, Tim escaped from prison with the help of Red Larkin (Matthew Betz), who actually was guilty of the crimes for which he was imprisoned. After Red kills the man who was actually appointed to serve as Silver City’s new marshal, Tim took the man’s identity.

Despite the years that he spent wrongly imprisoned, Tim really isn’t an outlaw at heart. He’s one of the good guys and he soon starts to settle into his role as town marshal. He even falls in love with Alice Wheeler (Dorothy Gulliver). However, Tim still has to get revenge for his father’s death and he is also going to have to deal with Red Larkin, who has no interest in going straight. Ironically, what Tim doesn’t know, is that he was only a day or two away from receiving a full pardon when he broke out of prison and went on the run.

The Fighting Marshal is an above average western programmer. Though the low-budget and rushed quality of the production is obvious (just check out the opening title card, which misspells Marshal), Tim McCoy is a credible western hero, looking credible on a horse and handling a gun with the skill of someone who started his career as a sharp shooter. The film’s mistaken identity plot is an interesting wrinkle on all of the usual western action and McCoy is convincing as he goes from being an escaped convict to being a man who truly cares about maintaining law and order in Silver City.

Of course, like many of the early western stars, McCoy was himself an authentic cowboy. He looked convincing with a gun because, in real life, McCoy was an expert marksman who was considered to be the best shooter in Hollywood. When he wasn’t making movies, McCoy served in the U.S. Army and he was also one of the first Hollywood actors to try to make the leap over to politics, running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming. Later, when his film career waned, McCoy hosted a children’s show where he would show his movies and discuss the history of the old west. He was nominated for a daytime Emmy but refused to attend the ceremony when he discovered he would be competing against a show featuring a talking duck. His exact words, when turning down the invitation to the ceremony, are often quoted as being; “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit there and get beaten by a talking duck!”

One final note: According the IMDb, The Fighting Marashal was filmed over the course of a week in October in 1931. Less than a month later, it was released on November 25th. That’s the old Hollywood system for you. They didn’t waste anytime getting their movies into the theaters.