Not a stellar cast
Actually, I’d go further. Gunmen from Laredo is stilted, and it has a clunky script and some wooden acting to add to the rather ham-fisted directing. OK, like all 50s Columbia oaters it had something. It wasn’t a total dud. It was in color, with some nice ‘Western’ locations (California standing in for Texas). But all in all it’s a bit of a bore. It was MacDonald’s last foray in the genre. He’d started as an actor right back in the silent days: he was in Fighting with Buffalo Bill (1926) and Whispering Smith Rides (1927).
Robert Knapp topped the billing. Knapp was a regular in minor parts of Western TV shows and also appeared in small roles in a few big-screen oaters but this was the only time he led in one, big screen or small, and to be brutally honest, I’m not surprised. In Gunmen he plays rancher Gil Reardon whose cattle drive is attacked and his Mexican cowhand (Martin Garralaga) and wife (Jean Moorhead, Playmate Of The Month, October 1955) are brutally slain. He too is left for dead. The perpetrator of this heinous crime is Laredo resident Ben Keefer (Walter Coy). We are told that Reardon killed one of Keefer’s cowboys in Dodge City, and though it was in self-defense, Keefer has exacted revenge.
Well, Reardon survives – the bullet just creased him, you know how they do. And of course he wants Keefer, and sets off, afoot, for Laredo. So it’s a revenge Western.
Coy had been Aaron Edwards in The Searchers, so respect, but he was more memorable for me in a tiny but powerful part in Warlock as the sheriff run out of town by the ruthless rancher and his yahoo cowboys. I also quite liked him as henchman in Five Guns to Tombstone, when he disarms a fellow of a derringer and scornfully tosses it aside. But like Knapp he did TV work mostly. He’s competent here as the bad guy. He owns a saloon, natch, for bad guys in Westerns were almost obliged to.
Reardon finds El Dorado (the saloon) and quickly dispatches Bob Sutton (John Cason), one of the Keefer henchmen, but though Sutton drew first, Reardon is promptly arrested for murder. Keefer tells him that there isn’t “room in the Territory for the both of us” (MacDonald and his writers – in this case Clarke Reynolds – specialized in clichés). There’s a trial but it’s the usual travesty of justice that we see in Westerns. The circuit judge (Harry Antrim) is obliged to find Reardon guilty after the perjury of witnesses and the verdict of the bought-and-paid-for jury. So it’s ten to twenty-five years in the state pen. Actually, it’s not the state pen. For some odd reason, though they are in Texas, Reardon has to serve his time in Unionville, New Mexico.
Of course he can’t stay there for a quarter of a century, or even a decade, because the movie would kinda stop. So he escapes.
One good thing: a new US marshal arrives and it’s Paul Birch. So at least we got some good acting and a believable tough Westerner. This marshal, Matt Crawford, immediately understands that Keefer has treed the town and is a villain, and sets about proving it.
Well, there’s a (very phony) jailbreak. Guards shoot Reardon’s two fellow escapees easily but curiously fail to hit Reardon.
Enter the Indians. Fleeing Reardon finds a Mexican-Mescalero maiden, Rosita (second-billed Maureen Hingert, aka Jana Davi, Miss Ceylon 1955 – so she was almost Indian) tied to a tree and he fights the cruel Chiricahua Delgados who has done this. It’s Pahoo! Well, X Brands, anyway. Reardon cleverly manages to get Delgados to stab himself. Now he has a companion in the shapely shape of Rosita, who, luckily, knows the way across the desert to Laredo. He also just happens to find fresh horses, some guns and some clothes to replace his prison suit. Lucky, wasn’t it.
But the cruel Chiricahuas, whom Rosita detests, notably Delgados’s dad Coloradas (stuntman Charles Horvath, often an Indian) are hot on their trail. A lengthy chase ensues. It’s a curiously green, arboreal and lush desert they cross. In fact it looks remarkably like Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park, LA. At one point there’s a fake dust storm. They shelter from it in one of the Bronson Canyon caves (also used as the Batcave) and she picks up a stiff stuffed rabbit, which I suppose she means to cook.
After supper they canoodle, but the camera discreetly pans away. It was 1959, after all. He doesn’t seem to have mourned his dead wife very long.
There’s quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing now as Marshal Birch and a couple of deputies get involved, as well as the Chiricahuas under Chief Horvath, who finally catch up to them. Reardon challenges the chief to a hand-to-hand combat, winner take all, loser skedaddle. You may guess who wins (though I’d back burly Horvath any day against skinny Knapp). So the whites ride off.
They get back to town. “Laredo,” announces Reardon, so that we know. Badman Keefer has got wind of Reardon’s return and he has stationed one of his ne’er-do-well brothers, Walt (Ron Hayes) on a roof, in bushwhacker mode, and the other, Jordan (Jered Barclay) by his side. But Reardon makes short work of both brothers (they deserved it because they were in on the first-reel wife-murder too) and Keefer weasels out of a 1:1 showdown by throwing away his gun. Of course he knows that no Western hero, even a B-movie one, can shoot an unarmed man. But he can’t resist a sneaky move. All these ‘deaths’ are remarkably badly staged; they do those fake grimaces and clutching of stomachs before falling.
The ending has a whiff of Stagecoach about it as the marshal sends the escaped prisoner on his way with the gal. Married bliss and a Mexican rancho loom.
Sorry to be so critical but really, this Western isn’t very good. Still, I suppose they tried to cram every known Western trope into it. It’s only 67 minutes and has all the air of a cheap second feature. Odd that Columbia thought it was worth a release in those full-on TV Western days. You could just about watch it for Paul Birch and also because it’s not a spaghetti. It’s not that bad.
9 Responses
I like your final comment, Jeff – "it's not a spaghetti. It's not THAT bad".
We are very much of one mind there, my friend.
Not a fan of the genre myself, despite having lived in Italy for 13 years.
Jeff
So guys,GUNMAN FROM LAREDO is better than THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY,who's
kidding who! OK Jerry has never seen TGTB&TU and I've never seen GUNMAN FROM
LAREDO,so there. Sometimes when I'm in the mood some decent pasta,a good Italian
red and a Spaghetti Western makes for a great evening. (NOT! says Jerry)
It's nice some of us "old geezers" are partial to the odd Spaghetti,Mike Richards
and Graham (From Fifty Westerns of the Fifties) Graham,bless him has even gone
as far to order the Sartana box set,a spag too far as far as I'm concerned.
Back To Wallace MacDonald…I've seen most of his output but not OUTLAW STALLION
or MASSACRE CANYON which I believe is on Jeff's to be reviewed list.
THE PHANTOM STAGECOACH is pretty dire and lifts a ton of footage from the superior
STAGE TO TUCSON. Another later Wallace is the fast & furious THE WHITE SQUAW
with David Brian OTT as never before,but worth a look all the same.
I'll take the good Italian red, John!!
NO, I really wouldn't say that that "GFL" is superior to "TGTB&TU", which as you rightly remember (WOW, good memory!)I have never seen. But I WOULD definitely rather watch a good Rocky Lane western than the average spaghetti, it is true.
There are a handful of spaghettis that are just about watchable, though they are very few and far between. The vast majority of them were dire, and in many ways not really Westerns at all. They referenced Westerns is about all you can say.
Jeff
Jeff, I have seen GUNMEN FROM LAREDO and you gave a fair write-up of a routine Western Movie. It looks like Producer Wallace MacDonald should have stuck to producing. He produced some good Westerns and other genres as well. I think OUTLAW STALLION(1954) with Philip Carey, Dorothy Patrick, Billy Gray, and Roy Roberts is really good. Not as good, but still good, although the Apache don't attack in that way, is MASSACRE CANYON(1954). A good cast helps, Philip Carey, Audrey Totter, Douglas Kennedy, Jeff Donnell, Guinn Williams, Charlita, and Ross Elliott.
John k, as for the so-called "spaghetti" or Italian made Western, I would rather watch a good Randolph Scott Western, but there is Sergio Leone's C'ERA UNA VOLTA IL WEST a.k.a. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST(1968). I first saw and heard it as a youngster with fresh young eyes and an unexpecting mind, just like when I first saw John Ford's THE SEARCHERS(1956). I had never seen or heard a Western like this ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. I couldn't ever forget the images or the musical score. I whistled the tunes for days afterwards.
Hi Walter, for me "ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST" is probably the one really outstanding 'spaghetti' western. Henry Fonda is mesmeric.
Jerry, I agree with you on that. Yes, Henry Fonda made for a fascinating badman. I remember seeing him in his first scene of the movie and it was a shocker. Henry Fonda was, hands down, a great actor.
I also agree with Jeff that many of the Italian made Westerns are dire.
It is at least arguable that OUATITW wasn't a spaghetti at all, but a 'blown up' Hollywood big-budget version of a spaghetti. For me, it is not so much blown up as overblown, and it often seems interminable, but then I am far from a Leone fan.
Jeff