Barney Beasley | Through the Shattered Lens

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

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

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

After getting kicked out of town for shooting the place up during a night of friendly fun, cowboy Jim Waters (Johnny Mack Brown) drops in on his old friend, rancher Ed Parks (Jack Rothwell). Ed has got a strange problem. There are cattle rustlers about but instead of stealing Ed’s cattle, they’re adding cattle to Ed’s herd. It’s an obvious scheme to try to create a feud between Ed and his neighbor, rancher Hamp Harvey (Frank LaRue). Before Jim and Ed can solve the problem, Ed is gunned down. Harvey is the number one suspect but Jim figures out the truth, that Harvey has been betrayed by one of his own employees and that all of this is a part of a scheme by Sig Bostell (Tom London) to take control of both ranches.

Bar-Z Bad Man is a B-western with a notably twisty plot as Bostell plays both sides against each other for his own benefit. As usual, Johnny Mack Brown makes for a good and convincing western hero. Whether he’s chasing someone on his horse or drawing his guns, Brown is always a convincing cowboy. What makes this film interesting is that it opens with Johnny Mack Brown engaging in the type of behavior that most B-western heroes would never think of doing. Shooting up the town and then getting exiled for his actions adds an element of redemption to Jim’s efforts to get to the bottom of Bostell’s schemes. Or it would if Jim ever really seemed to feel bad about shooting the town up. His excuse is that he was just having a good time. Try to get away with that in the real old west, Jim!

Bar-Z Bad Men is a good B-western for those who like the genre. The story is solid and Johnny Mack Brown is as convincing saving the west as he was shooting it up.