Tag Archives: John Merton

Phantom Ranger (1938, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Treasury agent Pat Doyle (John St. Polis) is sent to investigate a counterfeiting ring in Wyoming but ends up getting kidnapped by gang leader Sharpe (Karl Hackett) instead.  With Doyle’s daughter, Joan (Suzanne Kaaren), demanding that the government rescue her father and generating all sorts of bad publicity for the Secret Service, the decision is made to send in Tim Hayes (Tim McCoy).  Hayes, who will be working undercover, is selected because he’s not a “city boy.”  He’s a cowboy, through and through.  If you want to tame the west, you have to send a cowboy.

Phantom Ranger is a low-budget, 56-minute western from Monogram Pictures.  The plot is nothing special but the film itself still interesting because it’s a western that takes place in the 1930s.  Tim Hayes may ride a horse and wear a cowboy hat but he also works in a Washington D.C. office building and he interacts with a woman dressed like a flapper.  In this movie, the frontier has not caught up with the modern world but the modern world has also forgotten what life is like away from civilization.

The movie has the usual collection of B-western stalwarts.  Karl Hackett, John Merton, Charles King, Frank Ellis, Herman Hack, and Horace B. Carpenter are all present and accounted for.  Tim McCoy, a former rodeo performer and army officer, plays the hero and brings a lot of natural authority to the role.  McCoy was not only one of the first western heroes but he was also one of the best.

There’s no phantoms to be found in Phantom Ranger.  It’s still a good western.

Knight of the Plains (1938, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Clem Peterson (Richard Cramer) has a plot to force all of the ranchers in the valley to give up their land.  He gives a phony land claim to Carson (John Merton), who presents himself as being a Mexican nobleman.  In a situation like this, you need a singing cowboy and luckily, there’s one nearby.  Fred (Fred Scott) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) get involved after their cattle are stolen by Clem and his men.  Fred not only fights to save the ranchers but he also sings a song or two.

Singing cowboy films are always strange.  Cowboys who ride horses and pull guns and get into fistfights should not also be tenors.  Fred Scott looks convincing on a horse and he has one heck of a fistfight towards the end of the movie but he’ll also start singing at the drop of a hat and it just doesn’t feel right.  John Wayne did a few singing cowboy films early in his career and he could usually pull it off.  Fred Scott wasn’t much of an actor and had a forgettable screen presence.  He had a good voice, though.

This film was produced by Stan Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy fame.  Always read those credits.  You never know who you might find.

Billy The Kid In Texas (1940, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy the Kid (Bob Steele) escapes from a Mexican prison (where he was being held on a trumped-up charge) and ends up in Corral City, Texas with his old friend, Fuzzy Jones (Al St. John).  This version of Billy the Kid may be an outlaw but he’s a really nice outlaw.  He holds up two men who had previously held up a express wagon but he turns over the loot after he and Fuzzy are appointed the new law in Corral City.  The bad outlaws don’t want Billy the Kid or anyone else as their new sheriff so they bring in a notorious gunslinger (Carleton Young) to help them keep the town under their control but it turns out that Billy and the gunslinger have a past that no one knew about.

Bob Steele played Billy the Kid in a series of films, until Buster Crabbe took over the role in 1942.  Steele was a convincing cowboy and a convincing gunman but he wasn’t a convincing kid.  Of course, this version of Billy the Kid didn’t have much in common with the real Billy the Kid.  The movie version of Billy the Kid got into a lot of trouble but it was usually due to a misunderstanding.

Billy the Kid In Texas is definitely a Poverty Row western.  It looks cheap and it was cheap but it did feature a good fight scene between Bob Steele and Charles King and the relationship between Billy the Kid and Carleton Young’s gunslinger also added some extra dimension to the otherwise predictable story.  This film is okay for western fans who aren’t sticklers for historical accuracy.

 

Flame of the West (1945, directed by Lambert Hillyer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Marshal Tom Nightlander (Douglass Dumbrille) shows up in a lawless frontier town, tasked with bringing peace.  He could sure use the help of Dr. John Poole (Johnny Mack Brown), a former gunslinger who has set his weapons aside and now works as the town doctor.  Dr. Poole has sworn off guns but with corrupt businessman Wilson (Harry Woods) and his gang determined to keep their town lawless, Poole is soon forced to reconsider.

This B-western from Monogram is better than many of the other low-budget, poverty row westerns of the era.  While the plot is another example of a corrupt businessman and his gang making life difficult for peaceful settlers, the characters in Flame of the West are a little more complex than usual.  Brown stands out playing a character who, for once, doesn’t want to fight and believes that it’s better to talk than to shoot.  Of course, this being a B-western, he soon sees the error of his ways.  Dumbrille was usually cast as a villain so this film is a chance to see him in a likable and heroic role and he’s very convincing as a Wyatt Earp-style marshal.

Of course, even a serious B-western is still a B-western so songs and entertainment are provided by the gorgeous Joan Woodbury and Pee Wee King and his Golden West Cowboys.  (Don’t worry, I had never heard of them before, either.)  Joan Woodbury plays a saloon owner who wants to bring a higher class of entertainment to the frontier and she provides the film with enough sex appeal that 1945 audiences probably didn’t mind having to sit through the musical numbers before getting to the inevitable showdown between Johnny Mack Brown and Harry Woods.

Flame of the West is a good B-western that shows what dependable actors like Johnny Mack Brown and Douglass Dumbrille were capable of when given the opportunity.

Billy The Kid’s Smoking Guns (1942, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s a tale as old as time.  During the days when the west was wild, the U.S. Army is planning on setting up a new outpost near a town so the bad guys want to run all the ranchers off of their land so that they can be the ones to sell it.  Sheriff Carson (Ted Adams) is corrupt and working for the bad guys so the ranchers have to turn to Billy the Kid (Buster Crabbe) and his sidekicks, Jeff (Dave O’Brien) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) for help.  When Jeff is wounded in a fight, Fuzzy takes him to Doc Hagen (Milton Kibbee), little suspecting the doctor is actually the leader of the bad guys and using his medical practice to kill anyone who won’t give up their land!

Coming to us straight from Poverty Row, this B-western is interesting in that it seems to take a very cynical view of law enforcement.  Sheriff Carson is corrupt and Billy and his friends are running from the law themselves.  Buster Crabbe’s Billy the Kid films always kept it unclear why Billy was in trouble with the authorities.  Crabbe’s Billy the Kid always seemed to be the nicest guy in the west.  (Of course, Crabbe was also 33 and no longer seemed like he should have been known as “the Kid.”)  Eventually, the series was retconned and Buster Crabbe was no longer playing Billy the Kid but instead he was playing an upstanding citizen named Billy Carson.

Crabbe may not be a convincing outlaw but he is a convincing hero, which is all these films really required.  Billy the Kid’s Smoking Guns is a little bit interesting because of the character of Doc Hagen, whose occupation makes him a little more memorable than typical B-western bad guy.  The film is also interesting in that, for once, there’s no love interest.  Instead, it’s just men in hats shooting at each other.  That probably made the film’s youthful target audience happy.

The real-life Billy The Kid was killed when he was only 21 and after he had been an outlaw for only three years.  Buster Crabbe would g0 on to play Billy (or o some variation of Billy) until he was closing in on 40.

 

The Desert Horseman (1946, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Steve Godfrey (Charles Starrett) is in trouble again.  He has been accused of stealing another payroll and the only man who can clear his name has just been murdered.  Steve thinks that he is being set up by outlaws who want to take control of the dead man’s ranch, which is now owned by Mary Ann Jarvis (Adele Roberts).

Luckily, Steve’s old friend, Smiley Burnette, is working as a cook at the Jarvis Ranch.  When Smiley isn’t singing songs with the Colorado Hillbillies, he tries to help Steve clear his name.  He explains that Mary Ann Jarvis won’t listen to Steve but maybe she’ll listen to Steve’s alter ego, The Durango Kid!

Durango rides again in this movie, though, the majority of the hour runtime is made up of Smiley Burnette singing songs and making jokes.  Smiley Burnette is not for everyone.  I enjoy the broad humor he brought to these films but I can understand why others might not.  Whenever Smiley sings a song, it does bring the action to a halt but that’s true of every Durango Kid film.  If you’re a fan of the series, you either like Smiley or you can at least tolerate him.  Smiley does do more than just sing in this movie.  He also throws black pepper in the eyes of one of the bad guys.

Even with all of the attention paid to Smiley, The Desert Horseman delivers all of the expected horse chases and gunfights.  The story is a little more interesting than usual.  Steve has been framed for not one but two crimes that he didn’t commit and that adds some urgency to the proceedings.  Charles Starrett, as always, is a believable western hero and he takes the role seriously.

 

Trail to Laredo (1948, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On the frontier, everyone has gold fever.  People are trying to find gold and steal gold and it falls to brave Treasury agents like Steve Ellison (Charles Starrett) and Smiley Burnette (played by Smiley Burnette) to keep things safe.  When Steve needs to find out who is trying steal gold, he puts on his mask and assumes the identity of The Durango Kid.

Near Laredo, a shipment of government gold has been stolen.  Dan Parks (Jim Bannon) is arrested after the gold is found in his wagon but Steve knows that the Durango Kid earlier warned Dan about traveling with gold.  Durango and Smiley set out to prove that Dan was set up by his business partner, Fenton (Hugh Prosser).

This yet another Durango Kid movie where Steve gets a job working for the bad guy while Durango works to thwart his plans.  (Remarkably, no one ever puts two and two together and notices that Steve, Smiley, and Durango always seem to show up in town at the same time.)  Fenton is just one of a long line of corrupt businessmen and land barons that Durango has had to deal with.  Fenton is not above threatening Dan’s young son (Tommy Ivo) to get Dan to do what he wants.  Given that Dan is just trying to make a good life for his family in a rough world, it’s satisfying when Fenton gets his comeuppance.

Almost every Durango Kid film featured at least one good fight scene.  In Trail to Laredo, the big fight takes place in a saloon and it’s pretty exciting.  Not only does the saloon get trashed but there’s a moment where one of the bad guys actually seem to fly through the air.  Even Virginia Maxey, playing Classy the saloon singer, gets in on it.

Both Virginia Maxey and Smiley Burnette get to sing a few songs.  As always, there enough gunfights and horse chases to keep fans of the genre happy.  Charles Starrett was a great cowboy.

Cyclone Fury (1951, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Brock Masters (Mark Roberts) has been awarded a contract to supply the army with horses.  Corrupt businessman Grat Hanlon (Clayton Moore) wants that contract for himself so he sends his henchmen to kill Brock.  Because Brock has no known relatives, Grat believes that both the horses and the contract will soon be his.

However, Brock does have an heir!  He adopted an Indian child named Johnny (Louis Lettieri).  Johnny inherits the contract and both the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) and Smiley Burnett are going to make sure that Johnny is able to deliver the horses.  Smiley is also going to find some time to sing some songs that have even less to do with the story than usual.

Cyclone Fury was one of the later entries in the Durango Kid series.  By the time it was made, Colombia was no longer willing to spend much money on the series so that majority of the film’s action scenes are lifted from other Durango Kid movies.  If you’ve never seen another Durango Kid movie, the action scenes are exciting and feature some impressive stunts.  If you have seen another Durango Kid movie, this one is going to seem really familiar.

For western fans, the main appeal here will be seeing Clayton Moore playing a bad guy.  Moore had already played The Lone Ranger when he appeared in this movie.  At the time Cyclone Fury was made, Moore had been unceremoniously fired from his most famous role and The Lone Ranger was being played by John Hart.  Hart would only last a season and Moore would subsequently be invited back to play the role that defined his career.  As for Cyclone Fury, Moore is convincing as Grat, though the character himself is just a typical Durango Kid bad guy.  The Durango Kid was always going up against seemingly respectable businessmen who were actually outlaws.

One final note: Moore’s Lone Ranger co-star, Jay Silverheels, appears in this film but only in archival footage from an early adventure of The Durango Kid.