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Rod on the Outlaw Trail
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To back Rod up they had Hungarian Ilona Massey as leading lady (Yates had a penchant for European dames). She had an operetta voice that sounds oddly refined in her two saloon songs (she’d played opposite Nelson Eddy, and the year before had done a musical Western with him). She had a slight Dietrich-y look to her (with a rectangular mouth) but this was her only proper Western and she wasn’t suited to the genre one bit. Rod is supposed to fall for her big time but though he gallantly does his best, you just don’t believe it at all.
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The ‘other woman’ was better. She was Lorna Gray, ex-Columbia contract player, who changed her name in 1945 to the curiously masculine Adrian Booth. She started a long career with Republic in 1941, playing a whole variety of roles in B-pictures, including Westerns (she was a regular on Monte Hale oaters).


There were also small parts for Franklyn Farnum, Rex Lease and Kenneth MacDonald, so you can have fun spotting them, and this picture was unusual for having two Lone Rangers in it: both Clayton Moore and John Hart appear (briefly). History does not relate if they got on.
It’s a rather preposterous story about outlaws in Deadwood. There’s some idiocy about Rod having to marry Forrest’s gal in order to get her out of town, and also pretending to shoot dead the sheriff so he can be taken for a bad guy. But you view these ploys with amused tolerance. There’s loads of action – almost too much to keep up with. The Sioux are under Red Cloud and launch an attack. In fact it’s just as Forrest and Paul are about to be lynched. The chief lyncher hollers, One… Two… Thr – thwang!, a Sioux arrow thuds into the tree. Plausibility isn’t this movie’s strong point.
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The print is a bit washed-out these days, as is often the case with Trucolor, but it’s attractive in its almost pastel shades. Shot in the usual Corriganville and Vasquez Rocks Californian locations, there’s a fair bit too round the Kanab, Utah movie fort and the red-earthed Utah locations are attractive, if not exactly Black Hills-ish. The movie has a lot of studio sets, with pretty corny painted backdrops, as Republic often did, but there are a fair few location shots as well and the DP was reliable hand Jack Marta, who shot a large number of Republic Westerns, including the impressive Dark Command, and who would later work on (visually) superior pictures such as Cat Ballou.
The Dale Butts music is pleasant, often being orchestral variations on a theme of Streets of Laredo.
It’s all a bit of a farrago, to be honest, but since when has that stopped us enjoying a Western? You get pretty well non-stop action and stunts for your money with mucho shootin’ and gallopin’. Give it a go.
2 Responses
Good to see you continue to feature Rod's Westerns,you have already covered two
of his best SAN ANTONE and PANHANDLE. I agree THE PLUNDERERS is a somewhat
middling effort Rod and Joe Kane have done far better:BRIMSTONE,HELL'S OUTPOST and the sublime RIDE THE MAN DOWN.
Best of the lot IMHO is Selander's SHORT GRASS the fight between Rod and Jeff
York is a doozy.
Thanks! I hope to get round to them all gradually. I was never the greatest Rod fan but he did have something, certainly.
Jeff