Dick Botiller | Through the Shattered Lens

“You see, stranger, I am a sheep man.” — James Farley (Ed Porter)

On the frontier, a range war has broken out between the cattlemen and the sheepherders. When rancher Seth Darnell is murdered, the blame is put on the sheepherders. When the Cheyenne Kid (Reb Russell) rides up on the small camp of the sheepherders and hears their problems, he decides to investigate on his own by getting a job at the Darnell ranch. Soon, Cheyenne is discovering the truth and also being pursued by both Darnell’s daughter (Victoria Vinton) and the daughter (Tina Menard) of the leader of the sheepherders.

Reb Russell was a former college football star who had a minor B-western career in the 30s. Supposedly, he didn’t really much care for Hollywood and he retired from acting in 1935, the same year that The Cheyenne Tornado came out. Russell went on to find a lot of success as a rancher himself.

The Cheyenne Tornado is a typical B-western. It’s short. There’s a lot shots of men riding on horses. There’s a little gunplay and a mystery that anyone should be able to solve. The acting is bad all the way around with even star Reb Russell failing to make much of an impression. It probably did not matter to the film’s target audience in 1935. They were there for the old west action and the movie does deliver that.

There’s a $2500 dollar reward out for the masked bandit known as the Durango Kid but little do the residents of Timber Rock know that the Kid is actually Steve Brent (Charles Starrett), a Treasury agent who puts on a mask whenever he needs to go undercover and discover what the bad guys are doing.

A range war has broken out between the sheep farmers led by Jack Mahoney (Jock Mahoney) and the cattlemen led by Carl Buckley (Tristram Coffin). To broker a peace and discover which side is the most to blame, Brent works for the cattlemen while the Durango Kid sides with the sheepmen. It turns out that Buckley’s to blame here. He’s using the war to thin out his cattle so that an Eastern beef syndicate can keep prices high. When Mahoney gets too close to the truth, he is framed for the murder of Mr. Woodstock and it’s up to the Durango Kid to prove that Mahoney is innocent. Meanwhile, Carl wants to blow up an entire mountain so that it will really thin out his cattle herd.

This is a typical Durango Kid movie, entertaining if you like B-westerns and probably boring if they’re not your thing. It has all the usual gunfights, horse chases, and dynamite explosions that are promised by every Durango Kid film. Starrett was always one of the most convincing cowboys on screen, even if his use of the Durango Kid alter ego didn’t always make sense. All the usual members of the Durango stock company show up, all playing different characters than they did in the previous Durango Kid film. Mahoney gets to play one of the good guys for once and his spirited girlfriend is played by the lovely Dani Sue Nolan. Smiley Burnett shows up to provide comic relief. This time, he’s a singing tour guide. He sings a song called It’s Got To Get Better. Let’s hope so.