User Reviews

I have a poster for this film which touts it as in "full glorious colour". The copy I have is in black and white. There is the odd fragment missing, and some of the dialogue is a little out of synch. Otherwise, if this be the only copy around, there is no point in complaining.

Diane (pronounced dee-ANN) Corday (Damita) is a Hollywood star visiting the fictitious Meso-American country of Alturas. Pancho (Del Campo) is a bandit who is a huge fan of hers - so huge that during kissing scenes involving Diane while watching the film, he will - Elvis style - take out a pistol and shoot at the screen. He and his muchachos surround a train carrying Diane. A journalist aboard thinks it would be good publicity for Diane if she were kidnapped by bandits. The kidnapping happens for real,and Damita and her entourage are taken to Pancho's hacienda. There is some singing and dancing before the principal characters pair off with the right people.

My own opinion is that this is a B movie that was out of style in 1936 let alone now. The direction is patchy, and the production lacks the sheer professionalism of the big studios And, although there are some good performers in the cast, they struggle with a poor script. The train conductor's cap and Damita's vocal flourishes are one of the few things to raise a laugh in this so-called comedy. The settings are very claustrophobic. The only solo singer in the film (Del Campo) has a superb singing voice, and the music is quite good, as is the dancing. Del Campo and Damita get to cut a short but impressive caper.

I'm not certain, but if my memory serves me correctly, there was a Spanish language version of this film, and I think practically the entire cast were changed for that, even though many of them - Damita certainly - could speak excellent Spanish. I am pretty sure that the film was set in a fictitious country to keep on the right side of the Mexican government who had (rightly in my opinion) complained that Mexicans in Hollywood films were nearly always portrayed as villains. The film features uniformed mounted police called "federals." ("Hey, Gringo! What is wrong with los federales?")This is more evidence of Mexican government appeasement.

The film is perfectly watchable, even if it is almost certainly the second worst film featuring Damita. (Brewster's Millions must be the worst.)

For an early Western, this one has a lot going on. There's action, adventure, romance, and probably enough song and dance numbers to qualify as a musical. I don't think I've seen one before where the basic premise involves a staged kidnapping in order to drum up publicity for a touring movie star (Lili Damita as Diane Corday). It sounds like it could have been a Gene Autry theme, so maybe there's another one out there that I'll have to wait for to pop up.

There's also a fair amount of comedy too, with some clever retorts like the one in my summary line. That one came from secondary character Jane Evans (Jean Chatburn), an aide to Miss Corday who when she let her hair down, was actually the best looking female in the picture. She's also on the receiving end of a line from Juan Torres (Juan Torrena), who gives her pair of slacks away while she's taking a swim - "Your pants, from now on you'll do without them"! Hmm, I think old Juan might have had more on his mind.

I haven't mentioned yet that all this takes place in a fictional country that sounded something like Alturiz, but certainly a Mexican knockoff if there ever was one. Miss Corday finds herself in the middle of a romantic triangle involving her manager Gary Owen (Fred Keating), and the likable bandit Pancho Granero (Del Campo). Pancho's intentions are real regarding the actress, romancing her with love songs and sweet talk, and you get the feeling things might go his way at times. I was curious throughout why the real fiancée Owen never seemed to mind, although there was one very quick altercation between himself and Pancho. But they were buddy buddy immediately afterward. That angle was the most obvious head scratcher of the picture.

There is a particular segment that's noteworthy, the Fiesta scene that included the most amazing costuming that fairly screamed for color. It was a well executed production number with lively song and dance that was probably the highlight of the picture. Soon after, the federales made their appearance to rescue Miss Corday, but that was all worked out without any fuss or bother. Owen got the girl, and the Robin Hood of Alturiz was left to consider all the rest of the pretty senoritas of the hacienda.

There is one production number in this poverty row musical (from Grand National) that is very good that saves this from being a complete bomb. It will take someone with very good eyes to spot Ann Miller (in her film debut) as one of the dancers, possibly just part of the ensemble and not very easy to spot as at times when they do focus on the ensemble, the print gets very blurry in attempts to do close-ups. That was the draw for me, having attempted to watch this years ago and having been unlucky then as I was on this second and definitely last viewing. Lily Damita and Fred Keating are on tour in Mexico for publicity for the film she has done, and they encounter so-called bandit Francisco Flores del Campo who basically follows her everywhere she goes and serenades her, eventually giving Keating the idea to suggest that she has been kidnapped so she will get some free publicity. Del Campo goes along with it, which means that he gets to sing more songs to her, as well as to her dowdy secretary Jean Chatburn whom he finds bathing in a lake.

It seems that every time they run out of plot ideas or even silly dialogue, del Campo has to sing, none of the songs are very good. Only that big production number, performed as part of a village Fiesta, is interesting. I guess movie viewers have to wait another year for "The Donkey Serenade". With the silly plot, I'm surprised there's not a song called "He kidnapped her and she likes it". For Grand National movie, this does look pretty lavish, indicating that they spent double the budget than they did on their usual output of B westerns or crime dramas. Damita is far from a Dolores Del Rio or a Lupe Velez, and del Campo is completely unconvincing as a bandit, forever with a silly grin that just makes his performance ridiculous. There are too many cliches to even begin to laugh at, and after a while, the whole thing becomes simply eye-rolling. Perhaps this should have been called 'The Nuisance on Horseback" because there is nothing devilish about this phony little publicity stunt that most Hollywood reporters would instantly catch on to.