Last night, we watched Bob Steele in "Wild Horse Valley"(1940). There's trouble at the Kimball Ranch in Placerita. A break in the fence has caused several horses to run loose. "Dad Kimball" (Lafe McKee) blames it on the provocation of a wild stallion named The Pirate. He has his foreman "Baker" (Ted Adams) order the ranch hands to repair the fence, but the fact that Ted Adams is the foreman should raise your antenna right away. Dad has lost 200 horses so far, and will be out of bidness soon, if he can't get rid of The Pirate. Then Bob Steele and his pal "Shag" (Jimmy Aubrey) happen by. Bob is looking for his horse, which has been stolen by an unknown party. Bob hears about Pirate from Dad and his sweet daughter "Ann" (Phyllis Adair), and when he goes looking for the wild horse, he sees that it is, in fact, his stolen horse. Dad doesn't believe him at first, and offers a reward of one thousand semolians for the killing of Pirate. Bob is certain that Pirate is his horse, and isn't responsible for the break in the fence, or the missing horses. He asks Dad for one chance to capture Pirate, and......
Now wait just a cotton pickin' minute! We've heard all this before! You might remember a Tom Tyler movie from about a month ago called "Coyote Trails", in which a horse called The Phantom was accused of the very same thing. I'm tellin' ya it's the same script, substituting Bob Steele for Tom Tyler. At any rate, this version was good too. Lafe McKee plays Dad the Horse Rancher in both movies. If I had to choose, I'll take the Tom Tyler version, but watch this one too. Two Big Thumbs Up.
Okey dokie, sorry to cut you off at the pass, but we more-or-less reviewed that movie the last time. We had no such problem the previous night, which saw us back with Rex Bell in "West of Nevada"(1936). Rex and his sidekick Al St. John are ridin' though the Alabammy Hills, with Rex kidding Al about his latest foiled romance, when Al's stomach starts grumblin' (a St. John trademark). Shots ring out, interrupting the hunger pangs, and the two cowpokes ride out of the rocks to the trail and see a runaway wagon blazing full tilt, being chased by a gang of bandits. On the wagon are two men, a taxidermist named "Haldain" (Steve Clark) and his Indian helper "Bald Eagle" (Dick Botiller), who's been shot. Rex and Al dispatch the gunmen with some quick trigger work of their own, and Rex uses his knife to extract the bullet from Bald Eagle's chest. Then they all ride back to town for more treatment, where Haldain's daughter "Helen" (Joan Barclay) is a nurse. Haldain doesn't trust doctors or anyone else, and Rex starts to think he's hiding something when he and Al help carry in his cargo of stuffed animals, which weigh a ton.
After helping Haldain, and while Bald Eagle is recovering, Rex rides into town to see if any mail has come for him, as he's expecting a letter from his Dad. "Steve Cutting" (Forrest Taylor), who runs the bank as well as post office, says "no, we haven't got anything for you", but then he double checks when he sees Rex doesn't believe him. "Oh yes, now I remember, we do have one letter in your name." When Rex takes the letter back to Mr. Haldain's house, he sees that its been previously steamed open. The letter, indeed from his Dad, references a shipment of gold that will benefit the local Indians. It's left unstated what this has to do with Rex and Al, but we'll find out soon enough. Meanwhile, banker Steve Cutting calls one of his henchmen into his office. "Find out what that guy is up to" he says of Rex. The henchman says "I can do better than that, I can kill him", but Cutting says "not yet, not until we find out where the Indians' gold is." His bank is about to go under because he's stolen and spent all the money of his depositors; he needs that gold from the Indians, and is going to try to steal it, even though it's on their land and he'll be risking his neck. As noted, Mr. Haldain doesn't trust anyone, and when Cutting - doing his best Snidely Whiplash impersonation - tells daughter Helen that Rex is a crook out to steal the gold himself, she believes him. Rex is still curious why the stuffed animals were so heavy, and he sneaks into Haldain's workshop to discover that the specimens are stuffed with gold nuggets.
After that, he catches up with Helen and convinces her that he's not a gold thief, but by this time, Steve Cutting and his men have lured Bald Eagle into a trap, and are gonna force him to tell where the gold is. We weren't overly impressed with Rex Bell the first time we saw him, but he's really good in this one. Al St. John is his usual comic self and is also used for what romance there is, after he falls in love with "Rose Gilbury" (Georgia O'Dell), the ranch cook. They make for a goofy couple, but Al is continually being called upon by Rex for help with the bad guys, and he has a running gag about "being interrupted", ahem, in his "lovemaking" as he puts it, and it's funny (not risque) but they use it too many times. The location photography at Lone Pine is beautiful, with snow capped mountains as a backdrop for the Alabammy Hills. Two Big Thumbs Up for "West of Nevada" as Rex Bell joins our company of Top Cowboys. We're gonna need him, too, as I'm finding it harder to locate films we haven't seen by our Big Three of Johnny Mack Brown, Tom Tyler and Tim McCoy. Ditto for Harry Carey and Ken Maynard, both of whom we haven't seen in a few weeks because I've been unable to dig up new films. I'll keep looking, though, as we've gotta have our Westerns, as much a staple of life as air, water and tortilla chips.
That's the whole shebang for this go-round. I'm listening to another album I've never heard before, the first one by The Strawbs, if you can believe that. I say "if you can believe it" because I'm a huge (pronounced yoooge) Strawbs fan, and have all the cds from their classic period, or I thought I did, until I discovered that "Dragonfly" was not their first album as I thought. At any rate, entitled simply "Strawbs", it's quite good, and full of the folky material that marks their early work. It almost sounds like a Dave Cousins solo record, as he wrote all the songs and the instrumentation is mostly acoustic guitar and voice.
I hope you have a nice holiday weekend and I send you Tons of Love, as always.
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