User Reviews

Bullwhip casts Guy Madison as a man with an interesting predicament. He got framed for a murder that was self defense by Judge Don Beddoe working with Rhonda Fleming the mixed racial owner and boss of a freight line. She's got a huge advantage over her competitors being the daughter of a Cheyenne chief her wagons get safe passage through their territory.

But she also by the terms of her father's will has to have a husband in order to inherit the company. So poor Madison gets framed for a murder and then gets a signed release from Beddoe.

After that there's any number of people who want to see Madison alive or dead as their interests dictate. And there are some whose views change as far as Madison is concerned one of them being Fleming. As for Guy now that he's married he wants to assert his marital prerogatives in all fields. That especially works with the Cheyenne given their alpha male point of view.

Rhonda Fleming does well in a part that I'm sure was written with Barbara Stanwyck in mind. Though I doubt their are not too many mixed bloods that have her distinctive titian tresses.

In spite of a really stupid title song sung by Frankie Laine over the opening credits Bullwhip is a good little western with memorable supporting performances by Don Beddoe as one crooked and roguish judge and James Griffith as a gunman with shifting loyalties. Fans of the stars will approve.

There's not much to commend this Western apart from Rhonda Fleming looking good in an Indian princess outfit straight out of a musical. The plot is full of holes, such as Parnell's men knowing exactly where to find Steve and his sidekick and Pine Camp switching his loyalty from Cheyenne to Steve after being thrashed by him.

Pine Camp is an unconvincing Indian, just as Fleming makes an unconvincing half-breed.

When Cheyenne's wagons meet the Indians in an exchange of hand gestures I couldn't help feeling that Cheyenne should have been looking at them to the right, rather than to the left. I played back this sequence several times and the "wrong way round" effect persisted.

James Griffith was a bit of a disappointment - he spent all the time looking enigmatically po-faced, though at least he kept us wondering about which contract he was going to fulfil.

The bullwhip of the title wasn't much in evidence - just when Rhonda was flicking it in a fit of petulance and when she used it ineffectually on Steve.

The film could have been beefed up a bit by more tension between Steve and Cheyenne, especially if they had been played by not-so-nice actors; imagine Jack Palance and Barbara Stanwyck in the lead roles.

Despite claiming self-defence, Steve finds himself in jail with nothing ahead of him but a short drop to the end of a rope. When the judge that sentenced him, offers him a way out, Steve suspects he has been set up but has no room to turn the offer down. So it happens then that Steve is married to Cheyenne – a fiery young woman, whose father's will states that she will inherit nothing unless she marries within so many days. With the papers signed, Steve is let out of jail with no knowledge of who his new wife is and quickly finds that he was not pardoned – only freed, so a posse of men are after him immediately. Steve gets offered a chance to get after his wife and claim his rights as her husband by sinister businessman Parnell and thus he sets of after her wagon train.

Despite the trimmings, western setting and plotting, the basic story here is very much a simple case of "man and woman dislike each other while the audience wonder if they will overcome differences and perhaps even fall in love". The answer to this question is unlikely to have audiences on the edge of their seats but the film does just about manage to entertain even if it never really does anything that special or interesting. The story treads the usual path but has some humour, action and intrigue to make for a distracting affair that more of less does the job for an undemanding afternoon in on a wet weekend. Of course a lot depends on the chemistry between the stars in this sort of plot and unfortunately the delivery isn't good enough on that front.

It isn't that the cast are bad, because they are actually OK but this film could have been lifted greatly by some really sparkling chemistry and interaction between the two leads. Madison is fairly solid in the lead role and does do well with a slight swagger and wry grin; meanwhile Fleming is quite interesting but is never as sexual or as fiery as she needed to have been. The scenes the two share don't work that well either – the audience had to care for both characters and see genuine affection below the surface even in the most argumentative encounters and they can't manage to do that and just come off as, well, two b-movie stars playing opposite each other rather than anything convincing. Adams plays the usual b-movie villain with some relish but didn't make much of an impression on me I'm afraid.

The end result of all these average ingredients is a b-movie that never really rises above par for the course at any point but just about has enough comedy and energy to provide distraction if you are in an undemanding b-movie mood.

This is a well-worn story about a man who marries to escape the hangman's noose, then sets about "taming" his reluctant bride. It manages to be sexist and racist at exactly the same time. We never find out, for example, why a woman who won the respect of an Indian warrior is completely unable to fight back against her erstwhile husband. Or why the members of her team are so eager to get a "real man" in the saddle when she seems to have been taking care of things just fine on her own. This only made sense in fifties Hollywood.

There's a really stupid scene where she horsewhips him and he actually catches the whip--the second time--then yanks her off her horse. Never mind that the first time probably would have lost him an eye, which would make it pretty hard to grab that whip! Then, he prevails in a fight against her Indian bodyguard where he spends the first two thirds of it getting beaten to a pulp. That's some second wind. Later, he successfully negotiates with some bloodthirsty Indians (as they all are in these flicks) after they reject her now she's his "squaw". Never mind that he has zero diplomatic skills and she's been negotiating with them for years. And the way he keeps rejecting her attempts to seduce him just to keep her keen and keep her from getting a hold on him--yeah, right. Like the women are just throwing themselves at him all the way down the trail.

Finally, neither of the leads is convincing in their roles. Madison is just a jerk who gets unrealistically lucky. Fleming flips her hair and scowls a lot, but is totally unconvincing as a fiery tomboy. The only reason you'd root for her is because you want to see Madison get tied to a runaway horse and dragged over a cliff before the film's end. The way that Madison tames Fleming is so predictable and has so few obstacles that it will irritate the heck out of you if you see women as anything but blow-up dolls. Even if you do see them as dolls, the total lack of suspense will bore you.

Total waste of time. Even the scenery's kinda dull. Give this one a big miss.

To be honest I had heard this was pretty bad before I decided to watch it, but I'm never one to let others influence my viewings, in fact I'm more likely to watch something out of defiance! Bullwhip had one thing going for me before the viewing anyway, the fact that Rhonda Fleming and those gorgeous eyes was in it. The picture isn't very good, and it is in fact very morally dubious, all the characters are corrupt and shifty in one way shape or form, all motivated by greed or egocentric victories, which is all well and good if the surrounding film can at least do justice to a bunch of despicable people to create a taut climax. Sadly it doesn't, and as the finale fills your eyes with sugar you can't help shouting out that you have been cheated into watching a pretty bad film. Nobody in the cast come out with any credit, with lead man Guy Madison particularly wooden in the extreme.

Not even the lovely Rhonda can make me recommend this to anyone. 3/10

In which I woud have prefectly imagined Barbara Stanwyck. But Rhonda Fleming is OK in this role and for which you can unfortunately foresee the ending. This is a pretty good little western, and do not confound with Chuck Marquis Warren's BLACKWHIP nor Harmon Jones' - the same director as this one - SILVER WHIP, starring Dale Robertson and made for 20th Century Fox. Nothing fantastic, exceptional. Harmon Jones is a director whose films would deserve to be discovered again by old gems diggers. For me women are not necessarily made to be monitored, dominated by males, and in his kind of schemes - strong females - in most cases they finally.... Know what I mean? I love strong male stories and I am also a feminist in the same time.

"Bullwhip" is a romantic comedy with a Western setting. The hero, Steve Dailey, is in jail waiting to be hanged on a charge of murder- he says it was self-defence- when he is offered his freedom on condition he marries an unknown young woman. According to the Judge she needs a husband in order to fulfil and condition of her late father's will, which stipulated that she could only inherit his estate if married.

Unsurprisingly, Dailey accepts this offer, setting in motion a plot particularly convoluted even by the standards of rom-coms. The unknown woman turns out to be Cheyenne O'Malley, the half-Indian daughter of an Irish fur-trader and heiress to a considerable fortune. Cheyenne is a tough, independent woman- the film's title derives from the whip she always carries- and she and Dailey take an immediate dislike to one another, thus setting up the standard rom-com cliché that true love always follows hatred at first sight. In another complication, Dailey is being trailed by a hired gunman who has been hired not only to kill him (by the Judge, who wants his part in the murky affair hushed up) but also to keep him alive (by another fur trader who is hoping to go into partnership with Dailey once he has taken over his wife's business).

The film contains echoes of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew", with Dailey as Petruchio and Cheyenne as Katharina. The Western was, generally, a male-dominated genre; I can think of plenty of well-known examples without a single significant female character, and plenty more where the female characters are only there to provide the hero's love-interest or to be protected by the hero against the villains. There were, of course, Westerns with a strong female lead- Joan Crawford in "Johnny Guitar" is a good example- but these tended to be the exception rather than the rule.

Even films which did have a leading female figure could end by reasserting traditional gender roles; the hard-bitten heroine of "Calamity Jane", for example, ends up by swapping her buckskins for a frilly dress and settling down to married life, an ending for which we have already been subconsciously prepared by the casting of Doris Day, an actress better known for romantic comedy as an action-adventure heroine. "Bullwhip" tells a similar story, the transformation of its heroine from a proud, independent woman to a submissive, domesticated wife, as Cheyenne learns to accept her husband's authority. She tries to use her bullwhip on him, but soon wishes she hadn't.

There will doubtless be many today who would regard the attitudes revealed by films like this as offensive, but they were fairly commonplace in the cinema of the fifties, and not only in Westerns. Even when judged by the standards of the fifties, however, "Bullwhip" does not work particularly well as a film. A romantic comedy on the "Taming of the Shrew" theme needs a much more dominant hero than the rather colourless Guy Madison, an actor whom I had not come across before except for a minor role in "Since You Went Away". (If this film is typical of the standard of his work, it is hardly surprising that he is no longer a household name). Rhonda Fleming is better as the fiery red-headed Cheyenne, although she is not good enough to carry the film on her own. Her looks, moreover, do not really suggest the Indian blood with which she is credited by the script.

"Bullwhip" is typical of the many Western B-movies that were churned out by the studios in the fifties. Such films were rarely spectacularly bad, and this one is not. Technically, it is competently made, the actors for the most part play their parts adequately if not particularly well. Nevertheless, it never rises far above the level of the mediocre, which it might have done had there been a greater rapport between the two leads. 5/10

When Ms Rhonda pops out of her covered wagon with her perfect makeup and bright red lips and that designer 'Indian drag" outfit with the beads and fringe and the big feather and, oh, that tough pouty look... Haven't we done enough to the natives without suggesting they wouldn't fall down laughing at such a sight. Please girl.

I do not get the hate for Bullwhip. While I agree it is not the Big Country, Shane or The Searchers it is a very good movie. The key is not to look at it in terms of 2020 or as The Taming Of The Shrew, just see it the picture it is. A lighthearted western. First off no one was supposed to take the redhead Cheyenne O'Malley as a serious Native American ( or even half breed), see her dressed as an Indian princess in one scene that really stands out. Think about it, if they wanted serious, Allied Artists would not have cast Rhonda Fleming in the role, they would have chosen a brunette instead of a redhead. Of equal importance, is the belief that she changed from a tough woman to one who submitted to her husband Steve ( Guy Madison). Actually not true. When she first saw him, she was attracted to him but she would not admit it. What he had to do is earn her respect ( which he does when he does things like take her whip away from her and yank her off a horse, and beat her Indian friend Podo in a fight ( Podo changes sides later on and is on his side)), and then eventually love. It is a fun western that I enjoyed and I give it 9/10 stars.

I ran across this DUD when I was watching many Guy Madison movies. I grew up cheering him on in the TV show WILD BILL HICKOK. This Bullwhip movie is so bad I could hardly finish it. Just a dreadful story line that goes no where. When they enter Rhonda Fleming's wagon, it is a normal size from the outside but the interior has a bed, chairs, box and has to be 20 feet long on the inside. Very strange. The "marriage" arrangement makes no sense what so ever. The sleazy sidekick drifts in and out of the story and controls all the action. I wouldn't trust that guy as far as I could throw him.

Note: Rhonda Fleming and Burt Nelson later made REVOLT OF THE SLAVES together in Italy.

Here's an example of Plot #37 -- the couple forced to wed under unusual circumstances who seem to detest each other at first but who slowly, inevitably fall in love. Since the plot holds no surprises, the success of any film using Plot #37 largely depends on its two leads. Do they have the right chemistry? And does the script give them good dialog to toss back and forth?

Alas, Rhonda Fleming and Guy Madison lack the necessary spark, and both of them seem a bit over-the-hill for this kind of romance. Their lines are without style and wit and the course of their relationship manages to proceed both predictably and unconvincingly at the same time.

An air of sexism and racism pervades the movie and its depiction of the Old West, but in ways that are more amusing than offensive. Seeing Rhonda Fleming in her Indian maiden outfit, complete with feather, has a campy charm.

Not surprisingly, Guy Madison gets to take his shirt off in order to display the chest which once adorned the inside door of a thousand high-school lockers. Though slightly faded at age 35 or so, this chest is still easy on the eyes and it's so unshaved as to be downright furry.

So this starts out with our framed hero in a jail cell who agrees to marry a woman to get out of jail and then his buddy arrives, an assassin misses a shot at him, a sheriff(?) fires at them and his buddy kills the sheriff and then he rides after his new wife's pack train and when he catches up, he takes it over.

The assassin is following him but seems to appreciate his friendship and ends up getting all the money for (not) killing him anyway.

I don't like the Hollywood disrespect for the law, but the girl vs. Guy interplay is entertaining, and Rhonda Fleming is eye candy par excellence with every male viewer wishing he was in that covered wagon with her. (Why not just offer her a massage?)

Her father who owns the shipping company dies, but she's an Indian princess. It should have been clarified that she had been captured by the Indians and raised as one of their own.

And Iron Eyes Cody looking good! I wish he were still with us too.

Rhonda's bio says she had 5? 6? Marriages and ended up with a son and 4 great-grandchildren. She definitely should have had daughters too.

BEAUTIFUL woman!

I was intrigued by the idea of Bullwhip but the resulting story/plot is full of holes, awkward direction at times, and two leads with little romantic chemistry between them left me feeling very disappointed. The depiction of the Indians is overly simplistic and while I generally like Rhonda Fleming, I found it unbelievable that she was part Indian. This was my introduction to Guy Madison and I think he does a fine job, but the rest of the cast/performances were unremarkable. If you're a fan of the Western genre then check it out but for everyone else, I would giddy-up on by.