.
Dale is a good badman
.
.
Essentially a 1950s Western, with only a slightly more visible amount of bosom and leg and a little more tomato-sauce gore, this straight-down-the-line Allied Artists color actioner was a post-Tales of Wells Fargo Dale Robertson effort.



The plot concerns Corey offering rifles to the Indians in return for their lives. Dale proposes to steal the weapons from the quartermaster’s stores at nearby Apache Bend in return for a big chunk of the gold in Corey’s mine. The Apaches take the little boy hostage as a guarantee. As you know, providing the Indians with guns in Westerns is a crime somewhere on the scale of evil between cannibalism and matricide. The Army captain (Boyce Wright) expresses disgust than even a man such as Wade Cooper could “turn against his own people” – for, you see, Apaches are not Americans. Actually, though, we know perfectly well even in the first reel that as it’s Dale he won’t actually hand the firesticks over to Kai-La. They’ll probably end up blown up in the mine or something.
.
.
Martha spends much of the movie in a rather un-1871 blouse
.
The best thing about the cast is Wade’s gang, when they turn up (they have been lurking in Nogales) because they contain Ted de Corsia as Jud and Elisha Cook Jr as Tex. Ted is quite dandified and appears to be still wearing the costume he had donned as Shanghai Pierce in Gunfight at the OK Corral seven years earlier, though it now seems rather the worse for wear, understandably. Elisha, always dependable as a gang member, was far from at the end of his Western career (he’d still be soldiering on in Tom Horn in 1980). There are another couple of bandits, Mike and Charlie (John Matthews and Tom Reese) but they are soon dispensed with, Mike gunned down by Wade in a quick-draw showdown and Charlie falling prey to an Apache arrow. You see, this picture is about four bad men and a badman. Regular readers will recognize the distinction. And if you’re not a regular reader, well, shame on you.
.
.
Ted as Shanghai
.
The picture was directed by good old Sidney Salkow (that’s Sid, below) and written by equally meritorious Robert E Kent. Oft have we waxed lyrical on the careers of these two. It was shot in nice southern Arizona locations (so plenty of saguaros) in a bright color. There’s action all the way. I thought it was rather good.
.
.
.
You will not be surprised to learn (so no spoiler here) that the US Cavalry arrives at the last moment, all the bad guys are eliminated and Dale and Martha go off with the little boy to start a new life in California, a new family unit, just as in Hondo, The Tin Star, Yuma, Face of a Fugitive, Quantrill’s Raiders, Trooper Hook… oh, any number of other Westerns you care to name.
Definitely watchable.
2 Responses
For some unaccountable reason, I have never seen this film. I probably should….
Like you, Jeff, as a boy I was completely hooked on "TALES OF WELLS FARGO" and have never lost the love for it or for the work of Dale Robertson also therefore.
You'll enjoy it, is my guess. No epic work of art, it's nevertheless a rootin', tootin' experience.
Jeff