Last night, we saw a Railroad Western called "Kansas Pacific"(1953), which was pretty cool because we haven't had one of those in a while. And, it was in color, too (though we don't usually prefer Westerns in color, or most movies for that matter). At any rate, as it opens, the year is 1859 and the Army is trying to build a railroad line to the West Coast, because "General Winfield Scott" (Roy Gordon) is concerned that war may be coming, and if it does, they'll need a supply line from their depots in the West. The tracks will have to go through Kansas, however, which - as a border state - has two equally vociferous factions, those who support the Union, and those who support the Confederacy. The Johnny Reb sympathizers don't want the railroad to get built, and a group of them - led by "Bill Quantrill" (Reed Hadley) - are sabotaging the construction effort. It's all "Cal Bruce" (Barton MacLane) can do to keep the trains running, with what limited track he has, and on top of that, the Rebel gang keeps shooting at him and putting boulders on the tracks, so that he and his engineer "Smokestack" (Harry Shannon) have got their hands full, day in, day out. It's gotten so bad that Cal's sweet daughter "Barbara" (Eve Miller) wants him to quit the railroad and move with her back East. But Smokestack refuses to go with him, so he declines, and then the Army, hearing of the trouble on the construction line, sends in a "track engineer" (supposedly an expert) to facilitate the work.
But really he's an Army officer who's there to observe and rout out the bad guys. Before, all the railroad had at this whistle stop was Cal Bruce, sweet daughter Barbara and Smokestack. Now they've got the tall, strong officer "Captain John Nelson" (Sterling Hayden), who can kick some major league bootational. Bill Quantrill finds this out when his men try to cause a ruckus on the track line. Big time punchouts ensue, with Nelson taking on a squad of guys. After he wins, Quantrill ups the ante, and starts having his Rebs shoot to kill Cal and his train crew. They also steal a dy-no-mite! shipment and blow a train to smithereens. Many of the workers get scared and want to quit, but Nelson offers them double pay, and one by one they come back. And no one knows that he's really an Army officer.
This is what you could call a "perseverance story", because there really isn't a plot as far as twists go. We know who the good and bad guys are from the start. We know what each side wants, and we watch them play it out. So, it's more about the Determination of the Union to Get the Railroad Built, and in that sense it's like a Study Film from your old third grade class. That's not to say there isn't drama, because it's just one fight and sabotage after another. But the film could've used a Charles King to give it more personality, or a producer who wasn't so hooked on Telling a Historical Story. The director is Ray Nazzaro, a Hollywood Craftsman who could always be counted on for middle budget (non-Poverty Row) B-Westerns. And you can for sure always count on Barton MacLane, one of the great character actors of early cinema (he's older here but gruff as always). But if you take it simply as a Train Movie and put the Civil War sabotage in the background, it's very good, especially with all the shots of an authentic coal-fired Choo-Choo rolling acoss old time Chatsworth. There is one subplot worth noting, where Quantrill's henchmen wanna kill Captain Nelson but he won't let 'em because he doesn't wanna tip off the Feds and thinks guerrilla tactics will be more effective. He wants to instigate the Civil War, and in this sequence you get a bit of history that you may not have known about (I didn't), that all kinds of violent incidents led up to the war, besides just the slavery issue, or secession, and there was a run-up before war was declared, it wasn't just "bang" and it happened. All told, "Kansas Pacific", which runs 72 minutes (long by our standards), is an excellent 1950s Western that gets Two Big Thumbs Up. The picture is a tad soft, and dark in places, but watchable all the way through. Recommended! ////
The previous night, Buster Crabbe was back in "Devil Riders"(1943), the first entry in the Billy Carson series, started by Sigmund Neufeld Productions after Crabbe's Billy the Kid franchise was played out. In this film, Buster as Billy Carson is running the Pony Express out of Chatsworth. He delivers the mail once a week, cross town or cross country, but now he's got competition from "Tom Farrell" (Frank LaRue), owner of the Farrell Stagecoach Company, who is moving into town and has plans to expand his business once the railroad line comes through. With it will be built new roads, to other towns, and with his stages Farrell can deliver ten times the mail, plus packages and passengers, that Billy can deliver on one horse. Billy is undaunted by the challenge and says he'll adapt. "May the best man win," he tells Farrell.
Meanwhile, the competition between the two is a boon for Charles King. He's a would-be wheeler dealer who is working with the town's sole attorney "Jim Higgins" (John Merton). King doesn't care much who wins the mail war, but he doesn't want the railroad going through Chatsworth, because it will buy up all the land he's got his eyes on. And because the railroad magnates need the mailmen on their side (because the mail is popular with the public), King decides to start a war between Billy Carson and Tom Farrell by stealing all of Billy's horses (two dozen), and making it look like Farrell did it. I'm telling ya: every dastardly deed committed by modern big wigs and politicians was already being thought up and carried out by the honchos of the Old West, or so it seems in movies. But I mean, tell me that Donald Trump could out-do Charles King. Not even close! And King, even though he's a One Man Crime Wave, has ten times more smarts and class.
Anyhow, after King has his henchmen stampede Billy's horses, Billy confronts Farrell at a barn dance (where we get to hear two songs by Tex Williams and the Big Slicker Band). The two men go outside to talk about the stampede, with Billy thinking Farrell is the culprit. But then Farrell gets shot, and the Sheriff, who was at the dance, runs outside and Farrell tells him: "Billy didn't shoot me, it came from the bushes" (stay! out! da bushes!) (actually, we love da bushes now, compared to Trump). Farrell goes home to convalesce under the care of sweet daughter "Sally" (Patti McCarthy), while Billy asks his old pal "Fuzzy" (Al St. John), who runs the general store, to help him catch the shooter of Mr. Farrell. Whoever it is has ridden off into the boonies, and Billy still has no idea that Higgins the attorney and Charles King the landowner are behind the attempted bust-up of the railroad and their mail business. So, he asks them for a loan to help shore up his Pony Express while he tries to catch Ferrell's shooter and get his horses back. But because the shooter works for King and Higgins, even though they "agree" to loan Billy the money, when he's gone, they call on all their henchmen to track him down and kill him, then dynamite the railroad in the process. It's a many-layered plot and well executed. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Devil Riders", featuring shots of Iverson Ranch from angles not usually seen. The picture is soft but watchable. ////
And that's all I know for tonight. I've been listening, as you know, to a lot of post-Ozzy Black Sabbath of late, and while it's debatable whether they should've used that name or not (Tony Iommi says it was Don Arden's doing), there's a lot of great music on those albums, even if it doesn't sound like classic Sabbath. Another really good one I just discovered yesterday is "The Eternal Idol", the demo version with Ray Gillen on vocals. Gillen passed away back in 1993, but boy could he ever sing. Listen to the song "The Shining" from that album, it's just killer stuff. I've also been listening to a lot of Ronnie James Dio music, and I'm finding that I like him a lot better when he's not singing with Ritchie Blackmore. It's funny - when RB first formed Rainbow, I loved Dio (who didn't?). But when he kept on singing about dungeons and dragons and rainbows, it grew tiresome, and his voice sometimes sounded (to me) overwrought. Then RB got Graham Bonnet, who was great for one album, but that style of singing (try and pop a blood vessel with your voice) would have been too much if they'd kept going in that direction. So, I thought it was perfect when Ritchie got Joe Lynn Turner, who I think was the best Rainbow singer of the bunch. He could really belt it, and was melodic without being gruff or over the top. And for a long time, I didn't care for Ronnie James Dio in retrospect.
But now, hearing him on the Dio Black Sabbath albums, he sounds incredible, especially on the last one, "The Devil You Know", when the band was called Heaven and Hell. And I'm also liking a lot of his own Dio albums, like "Master of the Moon" and "Majica", in addition to the classics from the early 80s. So I guess I like him least in Rainbow, but he's great on everything else. Anyhow, give Ray Gillen a shot on "The Eternal Idol", and make sure you specify him on Youtube, otherwise you'll get the Tony Martin version, which is the only album Martin sounds weak on. On all the other Tony Martin Black Sabbath albums, he's absolutely killer. Here's a list of recommended post-Ozzy Sabbath albums : "Tyr", "Headless Cross" and "Cross Purposes" (all with Tony Martin), "The Eternal Idol" (with Ray Gillen), "Seventh Star" (with Glenn Hughes), and "The Devil You Know" (Ronnie James Dio). Great stuff that I'm only just discovering!
I'm of course also listening to operas by Wagner. I could listen to those and Mahler symphonies every night. I hope you are having a good week, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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