Last night, I did go to the Alice Cooper concert (more on that at the end of the blog), but I got home at 11:30, which meant there was time for a Tom Tyler movie. In the misleadingly titled "Coyote Trails"(1935) - because there is not a single kye-ote in the film - Tyler plays "Tom Riley", a cowpoke lookin' for a job. As the movie opens, he and his partner "Windy" (Ben Corbett) are riding through Newhall when they see a runaway horse. The female rider is about to fall off. Naturally, being the gallant gents they are, they ride to her rescue. It turns out she's "Helen Baker" (Alice Dahl), the daughter of "John Baker" (Lafe McKee), the owner of the Bar-X ranch. Mr. Baker is mighty pleased that the boys have saved Helen, and he offers them jobs. "But, I don't know how long I can keep you on. We're losing a lot of our horses. A whole corral broke loose last night and ran off. There's a wild horse in the area that's aggravating them, a horse who's a horse thief if you think about it. We call him The Phantom". The audience knows, however, that Phantom isn't the problem. We've already seen another rancher, "Mack Larkin" (Richard Alexander) using Phantom for his own benefit, to steal horses from the Bar-X. John Baker's foreman tells him it's on account of Phantom, and Baker believes him, but the foreman is in cahoots with Mack Larkin, who cuts him in on the profits. How it works is that Larkin has his henchmen coax Phantom to the Baker's corrals, where he frightens the other horses into breaking out. Then he chases them away. Larkin commiserates with Baker, claiming he's lost horses to Phantom also. But in truth, he's behind the whole plot. He and Baker's foreman hide the stolen horses in Bronson Cave, and Larkin hides some of his own his horses in there too, to make it look good, like Phantom is the real horse thief who is causing all the trouble for the ranchers.
When Tom and Windy get jobs at Bar-X, Tom examines the corral and tells John Baker, "Your thief has two legs, not four; horses don't carry wire cutters in their pockets". The fence wire has been cut, but Baker can't think of a suspect. He still believes Phantom is responsible. He puts a 1000 dollar bounty on Phantom's head, but Tom says, "don't kill him, give me a chance to catch and break him. Then I'll prove the thief is a human being." He becomes suspicious of Mack Larkin because Larkin keeps trying to free Phantom every time Tom ropes him. Larkin can't afford to have Phantom tamed. This leads to enmity between Larkin and Tom and a whole lot of punchouts ensue, more than in most of these movies. They overdo that aspect, and it gets tiresome, but the real star is Phantom himself, a trick horse to rival Ken Maynard's Tarzan.
He's the main reason "Coyote Trails" gets Two Big Thumbs Up, though Tom Tyler is great as always.
The previous night, we watched Ken Maynard in "The Two-Gun Man"(1931). A shootout is blazing in the middle of the street after a card game gone wrong in the saloon. When "Blackie Weed" (Maynard) saves a woman who is caught in the open, her father - Mr. Markham, a wealthy cattleman - offers Blackie and his partner "Joe Kearney" (Lafe McKee) jobs as two-gun men, protectors of the ranch. A two-gun man is like an unlicensed lawman. A rep for a cattle conglomerate has already come into town and told Mr. Markham (Murdock McQuarrie) that his company is moving in 40,000 steers, "whether you like it or not". It's free range land, as decreed by the federal gubment, and there's nothing that Markham can do about it. Plus, the cattle corporation has a dozen two-gun men on its payroll. Marham decides to get his own men, and that's when the range war starts. The conglomerate rep is a crook. He has his henchmen run hundreds of Markham's cows off a cliff.
There are a lot of diversions in this film, such as a romantic subplot where Joe Kearney decides to do the talking for Blackie. Joe proposes to the gal in Blackie's place, because he's too shy to do it himself. That's part of Ken Maynard's onscreen persona, he's a nerd around girls. He's the most "aww, shucks ma'am" of all the movie cowboys.
Charles King gets his butt kicked once again by Tarzan, but as the movie opens, for a minute you think he's gonna play a good guy. This is very early King, 1931, so he's reasonably thin, with a full hairline and minimal jowls, and in the opening scene, it looks like he's gonna be the one to save Mr. Markham's daughter, but when the shootout gets too intense, her ditches her to save his own life. That's the Charles King we know best, haha. That's when Ken Maynard runs in to save her.
This movie is big on chases and action. There's little plot, save for the cattleman's repeated attempts to have Blackie killed and/or frame him. Lafe McKee gets ample screen time as the elderly Joe Kearney, an expert gunfighter, who at one point instructs two-gun recruits on the fine points of "snap shooting". This part of the movie was fascinating, because, when you watch these 60 minute Westerns, a lot of the cowboys, and especially the stars, tend to shoot with a floppy wrist, like they're "flipping" the shot out of the gun. As a viewer, you watch and think "there's no way he could ever hit anybody, he's just flopping the gun around". I am in no way a gun person, I don't like guns, but I Googled "snap shooting" and it's a real thing. So, rather than the modern cinematic way of depicting it, where an actor takes a stance, extends his or her gun arm, grabs the shooting wrist for support, and makes a perfect shot - all of which takes time - the "snap shot" technique is in fact what most gunfights were like, just guys in the middle of chaos hoping to hit something.
To finish off the plot, of course Ken Maynard finds out that Charles King is working for the cattle corporation (he's a double crosser). And of course they try to frame Ken for the murder of the ranch foreman. Tarzan escapes captivity to expose Charles King's involvement, and the newly trained Two-Gun recruits form a posse to track down the cattle corps henchmen. It's great stuff, filmed entirely in Placerita Canyon. Lafe McKee is another guy who should have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It's not just the 450 movies he was in, it's his screen presence. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Two-Gun Man". There are several versions with that title, so make sure you look for the one from 1931 with Ken Maynard. It's highly recommended!
Now, for the concert. Me and Grimsley left at 5:30. There was little traffic on a Sunday evening, so we were parked off Los Feliz by a little after 6pm. Tip for concertgoers, never pay to park at The Greek. Park for free on sidestreets near Vermont and walk up the hill. It's only about 3/4s of a mile. Grim wanted to go to the box office so he could buy tickets for Bikini Kill and Ringo Starr, but we were in our seats by 6:45 and chilled out until Ace Frehley came on at 7:38. This is the second time I've seen Ace open for Alice Cooper, and you might not imagine it cause I'm not a Kiss fan, but I really like Ace in concert. You know why? Because he's 100% for real. He plays '70s hard rock with a 70s sound, nothing fancy, he's not the greatest guitarist but he does a solo anyway, Ace-style. His between-song banter isn't forced, he just sounds like a New York guy talking to you on the street. "The world's so messed up these days", he mumbled. "What can you do? Say a prayer, I guess." Then he launched into a song. Or how about, "we played Paso Robles last night. Anybody know where the hell that is?" Or: "Paso Robles was bad, but I'm never goin' to Reno again. We played there two nights ago. The motel was a dump. My room wasn't even cleaned, towels all over the floor", then he starts another song. He's like a guy talking to ya on the subway. So yeah, Ace rules. And he may not be the best guitarist ever, but he's not half bad and he played for almost an hour. See him next time he opens for The Coop.
Alice Cooper came on at 8:56pm, and man, what a show. The stage set was like a cross between a Horror Hotel and a haunted pirate ship. Alice never breaks character, he never talks to the audience, not even to say "how ya doin', L.A.?" or introduce a song. The show is completely worked out, with stage positions choreographed for each band member, and the set moves forward seamlessly from song to song, there's no dead air in between. Something has to be said straight up : Alice Cooper has the best hard rock band in all of rock n' roll, and what's really incredible about that is they are a group of assembled musicians, hired guns. There are three guitarists: Ryan Roxie, Tommy Henriksen, and Nita Strauss, each of whom is amazing. Nita has the most modern style of the trio, she plays fast in the EVH two-handed style, but she adds her own twists and does not come off as another clone. The other two guys play in a classic-rock, Aerosmith style, but they know just how to play those kind of licks to fit the Alice Cooper songs. The three trade solos, and with a rhythm section of Chuck Garric on bass and Glen Sobel on drums, it's the tightest "studio" band you'll ever see. At the end, when Alice finally did say hello, he introduced the band members, calling Sobel the best drummer in Los Angeles, and he's not kidding. The drum solo he did was in a league with Neil Peart, he's that good.
They played 25 songs, about half from the classic period, half from AC's solo career. Rare gems included "My Stars" from "School's Out" and "Devil's Food" from "Welcome to My Nightmare." The guillotine segment at the end, which is usually reserved for "The Ballad of Dwight Frye" was this time set to "Dead Babies", in which Coop was carried away in a straight-jacket before he could use his meat cleaver on Little Betty. Then they chopped his head off, only to see him resurrected for "Steven", one of the eeriest songs he's ever recorded. Two different Frankensteins made appearances, one to open the show (during "Feed My Frankenstein"), and one at the end ("Teenage Frankenstein"). Then they encored with the famous Coop/Pink Floyd medley of "School's Out/We Don't Need No Education". Alice's wife Cheryl Cooper was, as always, the featured dancer, who performed the roles of The Nurse and The Black Widow, among others. A new feature was a giant Billion Dollar Baby that waddled around the stage during said song. The whole thing was one big Nightmare and the crowd loved it! As I said to Grim on the way to the car, "Alice Cooper is the Ultimate Rock Star". He's just as great as ever at age 74, and this was the best time I've ever seen him, which is saying something. Man, that band is just incredible, and that stage show, and those songs.......and Alice Freakin' Cooper. He's as good as it gets, and that's all I know for this evening.
I hope your week is off to a good start, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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