Dead Man’s Gold (1948, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on March 8, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Jim Thornton (Britt Wood) has discovered a gold mine so he writes to his old friends, Lash LaRue (Lash La Rue) and Fuzzy (Al St. John), asking them to come help him guard it. When Lash and Fuzzy arrive, Jim is nowhere to be found. With the help of Jim’s niece (Peggy Stewart), they discover that Jim’s been murdered. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the murder was carried out by Conway (Jason Cason) and his men and that’s a good thing because a genius is something you will never find in a Lash La Rue western. However, Lash suspects that Conway was following someone else’s orders. He and Fuzzy set up a trap to reveal the true identity of the mastermind.

Lash dresses in all black and often uses a whip instead of a gun but this is still a standard B-western. Historically, it’s important because it was the first movie that La Rue made with producer Ron Ormond. Ormond later went from producing Lash La Rue films to directing them and Lash’s career never really recovered. (Ormond, whose non-Lash LaRue films included Mesa of Lost Women and If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, was never much of a director.) Fortunately, Dead Man’s Gold was directed by the dependable Ray Taylor, who keeps the action moving and crafts an adequate if not exactly memorable western.

There is one cool scene in Dead Man’s Gold, in which Lash uses his whip to knock a shot glass out of a bad guy’s hand. Let’s see The Lone Ranger do that!

Return of the Lash (1947, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on February 25, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

There’s another range war brewing on the frontier. Big Jim Kirby (George Chesebro) knows there’s plans for a new railroad so he wants to steal the land from the ranchers so he can make a fortune off a selling it. Kirby calls in everyone’s mortgage, knowing they’ll never be able to pay. Rancher Tom Grant (Buster Slaven) reaches out to Cheyenne Davis (Lash LaRue, a look alike for Humphrey Bogart)) and Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John) for help. Cheyenne raises the money but then he makes the mistake of trusting Fuzzy to deliver it. Fuzzy takes a knock to the noggin and now, he’s got amnesia. Where’s the money?

This is a standard B-western and you know the drill. Big Jim’s henchmen don’t want that money to get paid. Cheyenne is on the side of the angels. Fuzzy provides comic relief. Lash LaRue appeared in several B-westerns. He never became as big a star as some of his contemporaries but he did have a gimmick that made him memorable. Most westerns stars used guns. LaRue had a bullwhip. When LaRue was first offered the role of Cheyenne, he lied and said he could crack a whip. After he struggled to teach himself, tiny production company PRC hired a professional trainer. That was a huge expense for a poverty row studio but it paid off because LaRue became proficient with the whip and he had a surprisingly long career. He was born Alfred LaRue. The studio came up with the Lash nickname. Many western stars, like Johnny Mack Brown, played characters who shared their name. Lash almost always played Cheyenne Davis.

Lash LaRue’s movies were cheap and never that memorable. In this one, Lash barely appears and most of the action is carried out by Al St. John as Fuzzy. But Lash LaRue did play an important part in Hollywood history when he briefly came out of retirement to teach Harrison Ford how to crack a whip for a little film called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Under Siege (1986, directed by Roger Young)

Posted on February 3, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Let’s say that you are the governor of Arkansas and, once again, your state is running out of money and will soon not be able to afford to pay its bills. What do you do?

That was the problem facing Governor Bill Clinton in 1986. His solution was to allow a big Hollywood production to come down to Little Rock and film someone throwing explosive devices at the state capitol. The capitol building at Little Rock looks like a smaller version of the capitol building in Washington D.C. The producers of Under Siege needed to shoot a scene where terrorists attempt to blow up Congress. Even though the state capitol wasn’t actually blown up in the film, the dome did end up with extensive burn marks that were visible for years afterwards. Many people in Arkansas were not amused that they had to allow a film crew to set their capitol on fire just to pay the bills. Still, if Bill Clinton hadn’t agreed to blow up the state capitol building, Arkansas could have gone bankrupt and then he probably would have lost his reelection bid in 1986. If Bill Clinton wasn’t reelected, he never would have been elected to the presidency in 1992, Hillary Clinton would never have been elected to the Senate in 2000 and, in 2016, the Democrats wouldn’t have been stuck with the only possible nominee who could have actually lost to Donald Trump. When you look at it that way, Under Siege is one of the most significant films ever made.

As for the film, it’s a 3-hour, made-for-TV movie about what happens when Islamic extremism hits home. Notorious terrorist Abu Ladeen (Thaao Penghlis) has managed to sneak into the United States and is hiding out in Detroit. He directs a series of attacks on beloved American institutions. Not only is the Capitol Building bombed but a mall is also attacked. While President Maxwell Monroe (Hal Holbrook, who was born to play presidents) tries to keep America from falling apart, his hawkish advisers tell him that now is the time to launch a strike against Iran, despite Iran claiming to have nothing to do with the attacks. Only the director of the FBI, John Garry (Peter Strauss), and the Secretary of Defense, Andrew Simon (Paul Winfield), argue that the president should exercise caution. Garry is convinced that the attacks are the result of homegrown, domestic extremism and not an international conspiracy. Garry is a very hands-on FBI director. He’s the type of FBI director who will chase a terrorist down a street in Washington D.C. Let’s see James Comey do that shit.

Under Siege probably seemed outlandish in 1986 but it seems prophetic today. The film’s depiction of both terrorism and the government’s shady response to it turned out to be accurate. That doesn’t mean that it’s a very good movie. It was co-written by Bob Woodward of Watergate and Washington Post fame, so of course John Garry is righteous beyond belief and the solution to all of America’s problem begin with contacting a newspaper editor and blowing the whistle. America may be under siege but a strongly-worded editorial is here to save the day.

Under Siege used to regularly show up on late night television and the DVD was popular overseas. (In France, it was called Au Revoir, America.) Not surprisingly, after 9-11, it vanished from circulation. If you can find a copy, watch it and ask yourself, “Would I blow up my state capitol just to pay the bills?”