A wandering cowpoke (Jimmy Wakely) who rescues an orphaned calf finds himself arrested and eventually sent on a work detail to a ranch whose owner (Kay Morley) has been facing difficulties from rustlers, sufficient to make it likely that she will lose her ranch in foreclosure. Jimmy and his fellow prisoners (including Lee “Lasses” White) …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: Six-Gun Serenade (1947)”
Amusing but uneven, this western comedy, originally titled ¡Viva la muerte… tua!, features Peter Nero and Eli Wallach as the roguish Prince Dmitri Vassilovich Orlowsky and the petty bandit Max Lozoya, respectively, who team up to go after a hidden fortune but along the way get involved with a revolution-pushing Irish reporter (Lynn Redgrave), a …
Read the full post →“<em>Long Live … Your Death! </em> (1971)”
The end was near for Johnny Weissmuller’s adventures in backlot and soundstage jungles with 1955’s Jungle Moon Men, one of three films in which he played a character named, in fact, “Johnny Weissmuller.” This time around, Johnny accompanies an author (Jean Byron), nice guy Bob Prentice (William Henry), and shady guide Mark Santo (Myron Healey) …
Read the full post →“<em>Jungle Moon Men</em> (Columbia, 1955)”
A Chinese schoolteacher (Anna May Wong) becomes a secret agent for her country in the wake of a Japanese bombing of her village that resulted in one little student’s death. The meat of the movie that follows is largely a mystery: A group of travelers forced to take shelter at a monastery clearly contains a …
Billy Donovan (Johnny Mack Brown) adopts the guise of an ammunition salesman as he seeks the man responsible for the deaths of his sister and brother-in-law. He comes to the aid of ranch owner Jean Halloran (Sheila Bromley), who is being threatened by the mysterious “Phantom” in an effort to force her off her land. …
Billy the Kid (Bob Steele) and sidekick Fuzzy (Al St. John) tackle the problem of a counterfeit “Kid” while dodging an old friend, a lawman set to arrest Billy for crimes he has not committed. Steele is his usual appealing self, and Fuzzy brings the humor one expects, though the low budget for this PRC …
Read the full post →“<em>Billy the Kid’s Range War</em> (PRC, 1941)”
Jimmy Wakely and sidekick Lee “Lasses” White intervene when a rangeland dispute prompts an old friend to block a public right of way, even as crooks working for both sides of the quarrel hope to foment a range war and take advantage of the fighting. A rather unexpected complexity to the situation makes for an …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Rainbow over the Rockies</em> (1947)”
Singing cowboy Jimmy Wakely and his pal Lasses (Lee “Lasses” White) tangle with a clever crook, a big rancher who has tied up all the railroad cars needed by the smaller ranchers to ship their cattle, with an eye toward gaining control of the railroad and forcing his smaller competitors out of business, too. A …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Moon over Montana</em> (1946)”
U.S. Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) go undercover to investigate recent murders around the town of Springfield, including the killing of a rancher named Hilton, whose daughter happens to be traveling to town aboard a stage the bad guys try to rob, a robbery that Nevada Jack foils. …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Partners of the Trail</em> (1944)”
This solid early surviving entry in the long-running Charlie Chan series sees the famed detective visiting England and racing against time to save a young man, convicted of murder, from the gallows — a task made more difficult by the fact that everyone save the man’s sister, and not excepting his defense counsel, believes him …
Read the full post →“<em>Charlie Chan in London</em> (Fox, 1934)”
