Carl Mathews | Through the Shattered Lens

Billy the Kid was a big damn hero.

At least that’s the claim of Billy The Kid’s Range War, in which Billy (played by middle-aged Bob Steele) is a do-gooder with a comedic sidekick named Fuzzy (Al St. John) and a hankering to help Ellen Gorman (Joan Barclay) bring a new stagecoach line to town. Williams (Karl Hackett) does want to the Gorman family to success so he hires Buck (Rex Lease) to dress up like Billy the Kid and ride a horse that looks like Billy the Kid’s and commit crimes, like killing Ellen’s father. Framed for all those crimes that he didn’t commit and with his best friend (Carleton Young) ordered to arrest him, Billy decides to go under cover so that he can clear his good name. Someone pretending to be Billy the Kid got him into this mess. Now, Billy’s going to get out of it by pretending to be someone else.

The action is pretty standard for a B-western. Mostly, it’s interesting to see a movie where Billy the Kid is actually a nice guy who gets framed. No wonder a whole generation grew up with no idea about true history of the American frontier. Sam Newfield directed a handful of Billy the Kid films and the capable Bob Steele starred in most of them but this is the only one that I’ve sat down and watched and it actually left me missing the production values of the Johnny Mack Brown films. For fans of these type of westerns, there’s the promise of seeing familiar actors like George Cheseboro and Ted Adams doing there thing. Even the outstanding character actor Milton Kibbee makes an appearance. For those who do not like westerns, this film is not going to change their minds.

Despite the promise of the title, there is no range war in this movie. There’s just Billy the Kid, trying to clear his good name.

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.