User Reviews

This oater is standard issue with a clever setup. It's 1863 in the small ranching community of Red Valley, Utah. Robbers bust into the Clanton Bank but find no money. They kill a couple of townsmen during their getaway. Then we find out -- this is no spoiler -- it was a clever plot engineered by the respectable Stanley Clanton (Porter Hall), the banker, and the well-liked Uncle Willie McLeod (Edgar Buchanan), the feed and livery owner. Clanton had taken the money first. The bank robbery was for show. Clanton then paid off the bank robbers with a substantial cut. He offers to help the bank's customers by paying 50 cents on each dollar stolen...using their own money. The two criminal scalawags keep $80,000 and they can remain in town as leading citizens, with Clanton a civic hero. However, they didn't count on Cheyenne Rogers (Glenn Ford), a gunslinger with a history they'd hired to lead the robbers in a no-shooting robbery, showing up late. Banker Clanton decided not to wait. That's why some really bad guys were used for the job. They also didn't count on Sheriff Steve Upton (Randolph Scott), being such a lawman of integrity. And they didn't count on Countess Maletta (Claire Trevor), who runs Red Valley's gambling house and fancy hotel, knowing Cheyenne's real story. And they didn't count on Cheyenne, when he does show up, wanting to stick around so he can get to know Uncle Willie's daughter, Allison (Evelyn Keyes), better and change his ways...or that Steve and Cheyenne have known each other for quite a while...or that....

Scott, Trevor and Buchanan keep it interesting. The Technicolor is rich and not too garish. There's lot's of scenery. The production values are first-class. There are gunfights, chases through canyons, a grand, smash-'em-up-fight in the saloon, a trial, a jail breakout and a first-class stampede of wild horses down Red Valley's main street. The drawbacks are a plot stuffed with clichés and some tiresome comedy from Raymond Walburn as a judge and Guinn Williams as Ford's sidekick. The most interesting part of the movie is seeing how Columbia made sure this vehicle served to groom Glenn Ford as the young actor they were placing their bets on for money-making stardom. Randolph Scott and Claire Trevor get top billing, but they wind up playing support for Ford.

Glenn Ford at 27 looks ten years younger, a kid who uses too much hair oil. Close your eyes, however, and listen to his voice. He knows what he's doing and he sounds authoritative well beyond how young he looks. After Gilda in 1946, made right after he was discharged, he starred in any number of Columbia movies. It wasn't until 1955, in my opinion, with Blackboard Jungle and Trial, followed by Ransom! and Jubal in 1956, that Ford finally made it to super stardom. At last his looks had aged to match his voice and skill at projecting manly integrity. The surprise is that he had such a flair for laid-back comedy, as in The Sheepman, and that when he chose to play a bad guy, as in 3:10 to Yuma, he was just as good.

This is simply a good ole fashioned western..not overly complex or long. It doesn't deceive itself in thinking that it was made but for entertainment. Still, it is one of those westerns you can watch once and be done with without returning. It features former partners Randolph Scott and Glenn Ford whose friendship is strong despite the fact that Ford's Cheyenne Rogers has been part of bank robbing(he even steals Scott's Sheriff Steve Upton's horse without knowing it his good friend for which he is thieving). In Red valley, Upton is under heavy scrutiny for a bank robbing that ended with several dead. Claire Trvor portrays Countess Maletta, a friend of Cheyenne's who gives he and buddy "Nitro"(Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams)a place to stay for the time being. Cheyenne desires to go straight, but finds that hard when Jack Lester(Bernard Nedell)and his bad bunch want to rob Red Valley's bank. It is actually Jack who is behind the murders, but Cheyenne's troubled past is hard to get away from. He and Nitro will be charged with the murders they didn't commit(the robbery was one Cheyenne didn't commit)and it will be Upton who must somehow save the day before Lester gets away with murder. There are sub-plots which include Cheyenne's falling in love with Alison McLeod{Evelyn Keyes;the irony of the story is that Alison's father, Uncle Willie, is actually in cahoots with Banker Stanley Clanton(Porter Hall)in a planned united theft with Lester to steal the town of Red Valley's loot}. Will Upton uncover Uncle Willie and Banker Clanton's treacherous scheme? Will Uncle Willie be able to go through it without his conscience always bothering him? This film has a terrific barroom brawl and a dandy of a climactic shootout. Columbia couldn't have picked a better genre to begin the coloring process as this film has some fine mountainous shots as men give chase on horseback and such. Don't expect to get your socks blown off, but the film is simple and well paced.

As far was westerns go, this is a pretty good one. Despite some familiar story elements, there is enough new and different to set it apart from the crowd--even if it was a bit of a disappointment when it came to Randolph Scott (and I am a huge fan of this wonderful actor and his westerns).

When the film began, I was a bit surprised. While it was produced by Columbia, it surprisingly was in full-color--something you wouldn't expect from this second-string studio. This is surprising also because up until this film, Columbia hadn't made any color films--why they chose to do this with a western and not one of their prestige films is beyond me.

The film begins with a bank robbery in which several locals are shot. However, it turns out that the crooked bank owner (Porter Hall)actually staged it himself--so he could pocket much of the money himself. His friend (Edgar Buchanan) is in on this, but is angry that people were hurt and even killed in this staged holdup--but Buchanan can't tell anyone, as he was involved.

A short time later, the Sheriff (Randolph Scott) is on his way into town when he is jumped and his horse is taken. Eventually, Scott makes it into town and he catches up to the horse thief--who he never actually saw face-to-face (and vice-versa). They start fighting in a dark corral and after Scott is beaten, something cool happens that almost never happens in film--sweet Evelyn Keyes is standing nearby during the fight. Instead of just standing there looking scared (a typical cliché), she smacks the guy (Glenn Ford) over the head with a bucket--knocking him out in the process! I love a woman like this in a film! Well, despite this klunk on the head, it turns out Ford is an old friend of Scott! And, soon Keyes falls in love with Ford! Now this is all complicated by Ford's past--he's a gunfighter who was forced to a life on the run. However, he isn't BAD--he was just forced into this by circumstances. And, now that he's in town, the baddies figure he's a convenient scapegoat for the robbery--and they do their best to get Ford hung. Scott is in a bind--he IS the sheriff but he can't just let them hang a friend. How all this is worked out is for you to see--I really don't want to spoil it.

In the film, there are a few things to look for. First, as the stereotypical partner, we have Guinn Williams--a fella with an odd penchant for using nitroglycerin! Second, the film has one of the coolest shootouts I've ever seen between Hall and Buchanan. I certainly have NEVER seen a fight like this one and was probably more typical of a real old west shootout! Overall, not a great film but it looks nice in color, has some nice scenes and is enjoyable. The only major deficit is that although Scott receives top billing, he really is more of a supporting character and has little chance for character development--a definite negative for fans who want the Scott of his later westerns (where he has a lot more depth).

Anyone know what the filmmakers were going for here? Judging by the fair amount of positive reviews the movie has it's following, but I chalk that up to Columbia's technical achievement with it's cinematography and color format. Around the time the picture made it's way to the half way point, it felt like it was turning the corner on drama and going for comedy. I guess Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams has to take some credit for that, but how in the world did his character Nitro Rankin come up with the idea to rob the Red Valley Bank? It sure came as a surprise to his buddy Cheyenne (Glenn Ford), who would have robbed it in the first place if he had only gotten to the town a little sooner. Adding to the comic element of the story, Cheyenne uses one of those Yosemite Sam lines from the then current Warner Brothers cartoons of the era; he says to Red Valley sheriff Steve Upton (Randolph Scott) - "...if you make one false move, I'm gonna blast ya"! It was pretty much right there I decided I didn't have to pay real close attention to the story any more. And besides, I was waiting to find out who was wearing the hammered silver rowel spur that the Sheriff made a big deal about when the story opened. Turns out the script went as clueless about that as much as old Uncle Willie. One thing you shouldn't do with Edgar Buchanan is make him a conflicted character. Yeah, he saved the day for Red Valley by taking out skunk banker Clanton (Porter Hall), but I wonder if he gave back his share of the take.

On his return to home studio, Columbia, after directing "The Tuttles of Tahiti" on loan-out, Charles Vidor asked to direct a Randolph Scott western, The Desperadoes (1943).

Photographed in brilliant Technicolor by George Meehan (who, because of the Pacific Coast dim-out regulations, had to attempt night effects by daylight shooting with the use of filters, special make-up preparations, and the tripling of background lighting), the Robert Carson screenplay sets the old, familiar characters of Western folk-lore through their cliché-ridden paces:

For example, there's the bold and incipient young outlaw (Glenn Ford) who comes riding into a Utah town, ostensibly to commit a hold-up, but actually to lose his heart to the local scoundrel's (Edgar Buchanan's) little girl-innocent (Evelyn Keyes).

There's the lean and soft-spoken sheriff who realizes the kid is good at heart, and so helps him to evade the villains who try to pin a robbery and a couple of murders on him.

There's also the local burlesque queen with a heart of the purest gold (Claire Trevor, naturally) and the inevitable crooked proprietor (Porter Hall).

All this is enlivened by a couple of bar-room battles and a wonderful stampede.

Alas, "The Desperadoes" is yet another golden oldie that seems to have disappeared!

This feature is 'saddled with' a rather hackneyed storyline of a young 'ne'er do well' risking capture after deciding to stop riding away into the distance and hanging up his gun, having fallen for the charms of a local girl. The former, Cheyenne Rogers, a very fresh-faced Glenn Ford, becomes infatuated with the daughter of the man who employed his skills to rob the local bank, unaware at first that she has identified him as a horse thief , given that the horse he has ridden into town she recognises as being that of Scott's local sheriff. As the friendship between the two men surfaces, she warms to the advances of the younger man, and admires his earnest attempts to leave his lawlessness behind him.

Randolph Scott and Claire Trevor play much less substantial roles than their stardom would suggest, with a young Glenn Ford and sprightly Evelyn Keyes enjoying the lion's share of the more meaningful scenes. Scott still plays to type in terms of embodying the staunch defender of law and order, whilst Trevor should have been given more scenes of import to strengthen the 'love triangle' which lies barely discernible in terms of the plot. Having made her career break playing the younger sister of Scarlett O'Hara four years earlier, this feature was her second pairing with Ford after 'Flight Lieutenant' twelve months earlier. Despite rumours of an offscreen romance between them, they did not openly strike up a relationship for a few more years. The romance which did start up was between Keyes and recently divorced director, Charles Vidor. Keyes would have a very self-serving attitude towards the 'casting-couch' culture of Hollywood, once proclaiming: 'I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments.'

As for the Hungarian director, he was finally given a chance to make his mark at Colombia Pictures, where he would frequently clash with the autocratic studio president, and production chief, Henry Cohn. Although this would seem a strange choice of feature, compared to other studios' first launches of Technicolor, Vidor and his cinematographer, George Meehan, do their best with what they were handed - two scenes of note being our first encounter with Scott's sheriff as he advances across a beautiful expanse of an endless valley, and the action climax of the cattle stampede through the town. However, one wonders how much of the film's better aspects were influenced by the presence of assistant director, Budd Boetticher, and how much the latter learned at the feet of Vidor. What is known is that this would be the first feature where Boetticher would meet Scott with whom he would enjoy a future fruitful collaborative working relationship.

Set in the frontier ranching town of Red Valley in Utah, 1863, the film starts with the robbery of the Clinton bank, where the robbers themselves find themselves duped into cracking an empty safe. It soon becomes apparent that despite outwardly appearing to try and compensate his clients for their losses, local banker, Stanley Clinton, played ably by seasoned character actor, Porter Hall, has employed a small band of local thugs to rob his bank. The latter are led by Jack Lester, a true 'snake in the grass, so well portrayed by Bernard Nedell - with moustache bearing a striking similarity to Lee Van Cleef. Enter Cheyenne Rogers, late for the bank-job, having been hired by Clinton's accomplice, and Keyes' character's father, Uncle Willie McLeod. The latter is superbly played by Edgar Buchanan in perhaps his best cinematic role. As his daughter becomes embroiled with Cheyenne and in greater risk of falling foul of his unwelcome partners, Uncle Willy belatedly takes heed of his own admonition to his daughter of striking up a relationship with Ford's character: 'A bad man's bad for himself and for everyone else.' His realisation of how greed has led him astray leads to a showdown with Clinton, whilst Cheyenne seeks retribution for coming close to the hangman's noose after being framed for the murders which accompanied the staged bank robbery.

One main weakness of the movie is what many regard as the incongruous touches of light comedy throughout the feature. Many of these scenes revolve around the literally explosive character of Cheyenne's partner in crime, Nitro, played by ex-stuntman Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams. Here he once again plays the dim, fiery, but reliable sidekick that was his standard character role in the late 30s and early 40s. Another comedy cameo is provided by Irving Bacon as the bar manager trying and comedically failing to safeguard his glassware and bar so that he can finally escape Red Valley. Cue a bar brawl worthy of the silent film era. Another issue surrounds some convenient holes in the plot, none more so than that of Cheyenne drawing a gun on Scott's sheriff to steal the latter's horse without neither recognising their former friend. A third aspect which detracts from the whole are lost opportunities to heighten the melodrama, such as the aforementioned failure to explore Trevor's Countess' feelings for Ford's wayward 'man on the run', whose brushes with law and order stem from his coming to her defence in their youth. The film script is also full of historical inaccuracies, from Clinton's description of the bank's new safe as a 'battleship' when they would not appear for another twenty years after the date of the film's setting, to a similar gaffe from one character referring to the stampede in comparison to Custer's last stand which took place in 1876, a full thirteen years after the film's Civil War setting.

Despite these flaws, this feature did serve as a vehicle for Columbia to groom their young male star whose ascendancy would be much better served with his next collaboration with King Vidor on 'Gilda' three years later. As a footnote, the screenplay was based on a novel by Frederick Faust, the creator of 'Dr Kildare', under one of his pseudonyms. Faust had enlisted as a war correspondent for 'Harper's Magazine' in the conflict in Italy in World War Two, hoping that his experiences of the battlefield on the front-line would garner material for a war novel, but he was killed having been hit by shrapnel during heavy fighting just twelve months after the release of this picture.

I guess that even in the 1940s, Westerns were just slapped together, sometimes not making much sense. For example, the film begins with a bank being robbed, and when the safe is blown open, all the men at the saloon -- directly across the street -- run out so they can get shot by the bank robbers. Yeah, that makes sense. There's a barroom brawl that's full of laughs, yet important to the plot; the comedy is out of place in this drama. "Nitro" (the sidekick) robs a bank...which makes no sense. The escape scene from the jail is more comedy...which makes no sense. And so it goes with this and many other Westerns. Not a lot of care taken.

That's not to say this is a "bad" Western, but it could have been much better. Especially when you consider the cast -- Randolph Scott (the sheriff), Claire Trevor (saloon owner), Glenn Ford (the "good" outlaw), Evelyn Keyes (stable owner...supporting actress in "Gone With The Wind"), Edgar Buchanan (crooked but likable), and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams (the doofus sidekick); in other words almost all the Western stereotypes you can imagine. Although billed third, Glenn Ford probably gets the most out of his performance.

The picture excels when it comes to its Technicolor -- the first Technicolor film done at Columbia Pictures. And, much of the outdoor scenery was filmed on location near Kanab, Utah, not that far from Zion National Park, and it shows! Probably the best aspect of the film.

Bottom line: It's not good enough to be an "A" picture (other than the Technicolor), but it's better than the average "B" picture. If you like Westerns, it's worth watching...once. If Westerns are not your bag, stay away. Barely a "7".