Tag Archives: Eddy Waller

Rustlers On Horseback (1950, directed by Fred C. Brannon)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Before I say anything else,  want to express how much I appreciate how straight-forward the title of Rustlers On Horseback is.  There are horses and there are rustlers and often the rustlers do ride the horses.  No lies detected.

Mistaken for being an outlaw, Marshal Rocky Lane (Allan Lane) becomes a member of a gang that’s led by Leo Straykin (Roy Barcroft).  Leo has taken over the Reynolds Ranch and he’s planning on cheating a land agent out of $100,000 so that he can finance his future crimes.  However, Leo isn’t working on his own and Lane and Nugget Clark (Eddy Waller) work to discover who the outlaw’s secret boss really is.  (This is a low-budget, Poverty Row western so there aren’t that many possibilities.)  However, Lane is not the only person working undercover.  George Nader plays the son of the murdered ranch owner.  Nader is looking for his own revenge.

This is a pretty standard Poverty Row western, with Lane looking convincing while riding a horse and shooting a gun.  The “secret boss” makes the film a little bit more interesting than I was expecting but not that much more interesting.  As is so often the case with these movies, how you react will depend on whether nor not you’re already a fan of the western genre when you watch it.  If you like westerns that don’t have much filler between the chases and the gunfights, a western like this will be up your alley.  If you’re not a fan of the genre, this film won’t change your mind.

This film was one of George Nader’s early roles.  Nader made a handful of B-movies, including the infamous Robot Monster, before he branched into more mainstream films.  Eventually, he found work in Europe and found fame as FBI Agent Jerry Cotton in a series of German films.  After an accident left him sensitive to light and ended his acting career, Nader found success as a writer.

As for Allan Lane, he went on to become the voice of Mr. Ed.

Salt Lake Raiders (1950, directed by Fred C. Brannon)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When convicted murderer Fred Mason (Myron Healey) escapes during a prison transfer, frontier Marshal Rocky Lane (Allan Lane) is brought in to re-capture him.  It’s believed that Fred has returned to the ghost town of Silver City so that he can retrieve a buried treasure of $100,000.  But when Rocky tracks Fred down, Fred insists that he was set up and that he didn’t kill anyone.  Rocky, Fred, and Nugget Clark (Eddy Waller) are soon captured by outlaw Brit Carson (Roy Barcroft), who is also searching for the money.

I wasn’t planning on watching Salt Lake Raiders today.  I’ve long wanted to review a Whip Wilson western and I was hoping I would be able to find one of his films, Silver Raiders, on YouTube.  However, every search that I did for Silver Raiders just returned Salt Lake Raiders.  Instead of watching a Whip Wilson western, I ened up just watching another Allan Lane western.

Salt Lake Raiders is a competently-made but not very memorable western.  The person who set up Fred is no big surprise.  The ghost town is a good location and, as always, Allan Lane is a believable hero.  Eddy Waller, as usual, plays sidekick Nugget Clark and lovely Martha Hyer plays the daughter of the man who Fred was accused of killing,  The movie holds your interest but it’s also so predictable that it is easy to understand why the studios abandoned B-western movies once television started giving them to people for free.

Unless I missed it, there is no mention of Salt Lake City or any other salt lakes in this movie.

El Paso Stampede (1953, directed by Harry Keller)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

With the country distracted by the Spanish-American war, someone is stealing cattle on the border between Mexico and the United States.  Federal marshal Rocky Lane (Allan Lane) is sent to investigate.  He gets a job with Nugget Clark (Eddy Waller), a local feed merchant, and gets to know Nugget’s daughter, Alice (Phyllis Coates).  As was usually the case with these B-westerns, it turns out that the band of onery outlaws is secretly being led by a villain who is an otherwise respectable member of society.  When it comes to the Old West in these films, the biggest threat was not from the outlaws but instead from the greedy and corrupt settlers who wanted to get their own piece of the action and who were willing to sell out their own neighbors and sometimes their own country to get it.  It falls to Rocky and Nugget to save the day, rescue Alice from the bad guys, and recover the cattle.

This was the last of the B-westerns to star Allan Lane as Rocky Lane and Eddy Waller as his sidekick.  Unfortunately, the arrival of television made short programmers like this one obsolete.  Kids could now just watch westerns on television instead of spending the day down at the theater.  This was not a bad western for the Rocky Lane character to go out on, though.  The plot is predictable but that’s to be expected for a 53-minute programmer like this one.  However, Rocky is an appropriately square-jawed hero.  He rides his horse, Black Jack, with authority and he looks convincing handling a gun and throwing a punch.  There are actually some good shots involving the outlaws’s hideout, which just happens to be hidden behind a waterfall.  For western fans, El Paso Stampede is a watchable and undemanding genre entry.

As I mentioned earlier, this was the last film to star Allan Lane.  He appeared in a few more westerns after El Paso Stampede but it was always in supporting roles.  Allan Lane appeared in 88 films, the majority of which were B-westerns like this one.  Today, though, Lane is best-remembered for a role for which he wasn’t even given onscreen credit, providing the voice of the talking horse, Mr. Ed.

Sweetheart of the Navy (1937, directed by Duncan Mansfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I watched this movie by accident.

I was looking for Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, an obscure Buster Crabbe film that is nearly impossible to find.  I was happy to see that someone had uploaded it to YouTube but then I watched and discovered that, even though the video was entitled Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, they had actually uploaded a movie called Sweetheart of the Navy.  I was disappointed but I went ahead and watched because the movie was only 61 minutes long and I needed something to post for today’s review.

In other words, I’ve got no one to blame but myself.

Cecilia Parker plays Joan Whitney, who co-owns a cafe on the harbor.  When her business partner runs off, he takes all the money and leaves her with all the bills.  Joan has to raise the money to keep her bar open.  Her friends, Andy (Cully Richards) and Pete (Don Barclay), decide to stage a fight against the boxing champion of the Navy, Bumper (Jason Robards, Sr., father of the  more famous Jason Robards).  They recruit the overmatched Eddie Harris (Eric Linden) to fight Bumper and then get all of their friends in the Navy to bet on the fight.  Commander Lodge (Roger Imhof) views Eddie has being his protege and tries to change his mind about fighting.  Joan tries to convince Eddie to get in the ring.

I may be biased because I was already annoyed that Buster Crabbe wasn’t in this movie but Sweetheart of the Navy was instantly forgettable, creaky, and corny.  Forgettable songs, stagey directing, and boxing action that won’t exactly put Rocky to shame, Sweetheart of the Navy took 61 minutes of my life under false pretenses.

And again, I have no one to blame but myself.