Tonight's movie was called "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" (1954). It was directed by Horrormeister William Castle, who branched out to helm enough Westerns that they were compiled in an 8 Pack dvd set, which I recently acquired from Amazon. Castle, you will remember, was responsible for last week's teenaged cult classic, the proto-slasher flick "I Saw What You Did". I saw what Castle did in that movie, and he did it very well. C'mon, you know you liked that pun....or was it a segue?
Well anyhow (turn off the italics, Ad), Castle was known for his horror movies, but the reviewers at Amazon gave lots of stars to his Western work too, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Gotta keep a healthy supply of Westerns on hand, and the dvd set was only eight bucks. A dollar a movie.
If "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" was any indication, I got just about my money's worth.
I mean, it wasn't that bad, and in fact it wasn't bad at all. It just wasn't that good. I think that Castle did as much as he could with a very thin story, but even so, he must have had an even lower budget than usual because, for instance, he would show The Dalton Gang riding hell bent for leather down a trail and around a bend, and then a few minutes later, in what was supposed to be a different setting, he would have them ride around the same bend, just photographed at another angle. It's like my Dad used to say about the early days of movie making, when a lot of the films were Westerns : "First they'd have all the actors in white hats (i.e. The Good Guys) ride in one direction, and then they'd have the same actors put on black hats (The Bad Guys) and ride in the other direction". Dad's description may have been apocryphal, but he was on to something. When you don't have much of a budget, you've gotta use whatever you can to make your film. Castle, being a total pro, was able to do this pretty well. If nothing else, his movies will entertain you.
Part of the problem here is the title, for two reasons. The first reason is that there is another B movie (or even C or D) called "Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter". Now, I am not sure I wanna know how Frankenstein came to have a daughter in the first place, and I suppose that if she ended up going on a rampage, I'd probably want Jesse James to be the guy to stop her. So I can't argue with the filmmakers there. It's just that......well, with a title like that......well you get the idea. We aren't talking "Citizen Kane". So that's the first reason, that the title of "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" lumps it in with "Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter", even though the latter film was made twelve years later.
The second reason the title is a problem is because it is misleading, or flat out untrue.
Don't wanna spoil the proceedings for you, but Jesse James does not appear in the movie. Instead, we have a young man named "Joe Branch", played by 50's character actor Brett King. Branch is supposed to be Jesse James' son. He believes he is; it's what he was told as a child. History tells that Jesse is dead, shot in the back by Bob Ford, as all Western fans know. But in the movie, Joe Branch, from rumor, believes he is alive. Joe has been outcast his whole life, tormented for being Jesse's son, but he's never been sure if it was true. All he wants to do is find out. To do so, he plans to enlist the notorious Dalton Gang. The Daltons were associated with Jesse James and would know if he was dead or alive. Also, there is a lot of money involved, for another rumor believed by Joe Branch is that Jesse hid a hundred grand in cash, somewhere in the vicinity of Coffeyville, Kansas.
It sounds like a pretty good plot, and it is. It's taken from real life, though some of the details are likely distorted or fictionalised. The main problem is that Brett King in the lead role just seems to be going through the motions. He played short roles as a "heavy" at the time (he was in "The Racket", reviewed a month ago"), but although he is competent here, a leading man he is not. As the movie starts, he rides to the rescue of Barbara Lawrence, who is about to be lynched (!) Trump must have been the Mayor of Coffeyville at the time, but anyway, she has been accused of a murder that was actually a justifiable homicide, probably because Brett Kavanaugh was offscreen somewhere assaulting her.
Sorry but I couldn't resist. I cannot stand these people and I wish they would go away.
But anyhow, "Joe Branch", the supposed son of Jesse James, rescues Barbara Lawrence, a more talented actor than he, and he does so because her father also knew Jesse James. A romance eventually develops, though it is hard to accept because it seems uninspired.
There are train robberies, an authentic period railroad look, a lot of satisfactory Western Movie Set interaction among traditional Western townspeople. Interesting is the fact that this is the first B-Western, and maybe the first B-Movie overall, in which no recognizable stars appear. Barbara Lawrence was a good actress who was in a few really notable films, such as "A Letter To Three Wives", but she is about the only recognisable face in this one, besides the main Dalton, a tall and skinny cowboy actor with a handsome but craggy face who you can IMDB because I am too tired to do so right now.
Other than those two, every actor in the movie was unknown to me. I guess most of the budget went into the Technicolor, which was excellent as always.
As said, not a bad movie at all. And, at 65 minutes, the story was succinct, an attribute we have come to appreciate. In the end, this was a rare case of a thin screenplay in the era of great ones, and a wooden performance by King, in a role he wasn't really suited for.
One single Thumb Up, then. No thumbs down.
Call it Half Good. Watch it when you are running low on Westerns and need a fix until your next Amazon order arrives, or your next hold from The Library.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment