James Reasoner's Blog, page 7

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Cariboo Trail (1950)

You remember in BLAZING SADDLES when Bart says to the townspeople of Rock Ridge, “You’d do it for Randolph Scott,” and the townspeople take off their hats, put their hands over their hearts, and respond in hushed reverence, “Randolph Scott!” Well, I’m just like those settlers. I love Randolph Scott movies.

Which is why I was surprised when I came across one that I don’t recall ever hearing of, let alone watching. THE CARIBOO TRAIL was released in 1950 and finds Scott playing Montana rancher Jim Redfern, who drives a trail herd into Canada with his partner Mike Evans (played by Bill Williams, who, a few years later, would star in the TV show THE ADVENTURES OF KIT CARSON, one of my early favorites). Redfern wants to establish a ranch and open up Canada to the beef industry, but Evans is more interested in hunting for gold. They run into an old prospector known as Grizzly (the immortal George “Gabby” Hayes) but also encounter some hardcases (Jim Davis and Douglas Kennedy among them) working for a villainous town boss played by Victor Jory. The only one in town who doesn’t seem to be under Jory’s thumb is a beautiful saloon owner played by Karin Booth.

You’ve all see enough Westerns to know how this set-up is going to play out. There’s nothing in the workmanlike script by Frank Gruber (another old favorite of mine) that’s going to surprise you, but it’s well-constructed and provides plenty of opportunities for action as well as a little romance and pathos, the latter provided by a fine performance from Bill Williams, whose character loses an arm due to injuries suffered in a stampede and become embittered. Scott is as stalwart and likable as ever, and I’ll watch and enjoy Gabby Hayes in anything. He’s my all-time favorite Western sidekick, and this was his final movie. Victor Jory is suitably smarmy and evil, and a very young Dale Robertson shows up as a cowboy.

Many of the reviews of this movie on IMDB complain about the cheap Cinecolor process and the photography, and the quality is pretty inconsistent. However, the movie doesn’t look bad, and parts of it actually look pretty good. There’s some spectacular scenery. Its biggest flaw, as far as I’m concerned, is a terribly staged fight scene between Scott and Kennedy in which none of the so-called punches are even remotely convincing. I’m actually surprised they let the scene go through like that. But that’s an aberration and the rest of the action is fine.

Overall, THE CARIBOO TRAIL is a pretty minor film, I suppose, but it has its moments that worked really well for me and reminded me of why I love Westerns so much. If you’re a Randolph Scott and/or Gabby Hayes fan, it’s certainly worth watching.

Review: Crown Vic 2: If I Were a Rich Man - Lee Goldberg

CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is the second volume in Lee Goldberg’s new series featuring ex-con and former professional car thief Ray Boyd. Ray wanders the country driving an old Crown Victoria interceptor that’s been decommissioned as a police car, making money when and how he can—often, but not always, illegally—and looking for just enough adventure and excitement to keep life interesting.

In this novella, Ray is on the hunt for a fortune in diamonds stolen in a robbery years earlier. He was in prison with one of the men who pulled off the heist. Legend has it that the guy hid the gems somewhere, and they’ve never been found. The problem is that the thief is an older man, he’s been released from prison, and he’s now in an assisted living center, suffering from dementia, so he may not even remember where he cached the diamonds. But if he does, Ray is going to find them and get his hands on them himself.

However, Ray’s plans are complicated by a beautiful young woman and a little matter of blackmail that ultimately may endanger his life.

Goldberg really keeps things racing along in this yarn. There are a couple of twists I should have seen coming but didn’t, and that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s skill in maintaining a breakneck pace. And Ray Boyd continues to be a fascinating character. He’s not a nice guy, at all. He reminds me a little of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker, except that Parker has some sort of moral compass that Ray seems to lack completely. In fact, this guy is so terrible you have to ask yourself how anybody could make him the protagonist of a series. But despite that, in the end you find yourself rooting for Ray to succeed, or at least I do. And that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s talent, too.

I don’t know if there are more Ray Boyd stories in the works, but I hope so. For now, CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is available in e-book and paperback editions. I really enjoyed it, and if you like hardboiled crime yarns, I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, November 1937

I don't know who did the cover on this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE, but it's intriguing. And they definitely want you to that there's a Charlie Chan story in this issue, since it's mentioned twice. However (and that's a big however), it's not a lost tale by Chan creator Earl Derr Biggers, who died four years earlier in 1933. No, this story featuring Charlie Chan was written by journeyman pulpster Edward Churchill. Now, I usually enjoy Churchill's work and this may well be a good story, but I have to wonder if publisher Ned Pines cut a deal with Biggers' estate to publish a new Chan story, or if he just did it anyway. We'll probably never know. At any rate, it's the only non-Biggers entry in the series until the 1970s, when several different authors wrote Chan stories for CHARLIE CHAN MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Which, come to think of it, was owned and published by Leo Margulies, who worked as editorial director for Ned Pines. Hmmm. Anyway, elsewhere in this issue are stories by T.T. Flynn, one of my favorite Western writers who also did mysteries and detective yarns, Robert Sidney Bowen, and Ray Cummings. That's a talented bunch.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, December 1934

WESTERN ACES usually had good covers, like this one by Rafael DeSoto that appeared on the magazine's second issue. The authors inside are a mixture of the well-known and the obscure. L.L. Foreman, Philip Ketchum (writing as Carl McK. Saunders), Orlando Rigoni, Larry A. Harris, and Clyde A. Warden (writing as Les Rivers) were all prolific, solid Western pulpsters. Eugene R. Dutcher, Leon V. Almirall, and Francis P. Verzani are less well-remembered, but that doesn't mean their stories aren't good. I don't own this issue, but that cover sure would have caught my eye if I'd been browsing the newsstand back in 1934. If I'd had a spare dime, there's a good chance I would have bought it.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Fast Buck - Ross Laurence

THE FAST BUCK is one of those books that drops you right down in the middle of the action and lets you catch up as you go along. Joe Chicagano, also known as Joe Chicago, is a down-on-his-luck prizefighter who gets involved with the Mob following World War II. He’s not much more successful as a hood than he was as a boxer, and as this novel opens, he’s regaining consciousness on the floorboard of a car being driven by a beautiful woman he calls Legs, because that’s all he can see of her as he comes to. He’s been beaten up and as the mysterious woman shoves him out of the car into the gutter, all he knows for sure is that somebody stole ten thousand dollars from him, and he’s going to get it back no matter what it takes.

Then he discovers that the police think he died in a fiery car crash the night before. When he starts trying to figure out what happened to him and find out who took his money, people he talks to have a habit of being murdered in circumstances that make the cops think he’s the killer. Joe’s not the smartest guy in the world and he knows it, but he’s extremely stubborn – and he wants his money back.

From here the author really piles on the complications, packing several competing groups of mobsters, stolen gems that were looted during World War II, numerous murders, boxers, and actors into not much more than 40,000 words, if that. The headlong pace of this book is its real strength, along with the occasional good line and some vividly sordid descriptions of various lowlifes and their environment.

Don’t mistake this for some sort of lost classic, though. It’s not. The writing, for the most part, is too unpolished and awkward for that. As far as I’ve been able to determine, Ross Laurence wrote only this one book. I wondered at first if the name was a pseudonym for an author better known under some other byline, but I don’t think so. THE FAST BUCK really reads like a first novel, with flashes of real talent struggling to get out through the amateurish writing. If anyone knows more about the author, I’d be really interested to hear it. I wouldn’t rush out to find a copy of this book, but if you run across it, it’s worth reading for the unrealized potential you can see in the author, if for no other reason.

(Reaching all the way back to September 26, 2008, when this post first appeared in a somewhat different form. It doesn't seem like it's been nearly 17 years since I read that book.)

49 Years Ago Today

Review: The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Five - Will Murray

Will Murray is back with the fifth volume of stories in his series The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. While I consider myself a Holmes fan and have been for more than 60 years, there is such a vast amount of Holmes pastiche out there that I really haven’t explored the field that much. I never miss these collections by Will Murray, though. They always ring true to the characters and never let me down.

As Murray mentions in his foreword, this volume collects ten of the more traditional Holmes stories he’s written, without any overtly supernatural aspects or crossover appearances from other classic characters. These are straightforward mystery yarns done in grand style. Holmes (with Dr. Watson’s assistance, of course) tackles the intriguing problem of a suit of armor that seems to walk around on its own without any inhabitant, clashes with a new rival who sets himself up as the anti-Holmes and advises criminals on how to get away with their crimes, and deals with a threat from a couple of past cases. He solves several medical mysteries, one of which threatens his own life, and battles with a phantom that haunts the fog-shrouded London streets. Dr. Watson acquits himself well in these cases and proves quite helpful to Holmes more than once.

These are just wonderfully entertaining stories, and I think any Sherlock Holmes fan will enjoy them. This may or may not be the final volume in the Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. Murray has a few more unreprinted Holmes stories but would have to write more to fill out another volume. I can’t help but hope that he does so. In the meantime, this volume is available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions, and I give it a high recommendation. 

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Man From Nevada (1929)

THE MAN FROM NEVADA is another silent Western starring Tom Tyler that was released in 1929, right after THE LAW OF THE PLAINS, which I wrote about last week. Both of those movies are included on a new DVD and Blu-ray release from Undercrank Productions.

Several members of the cast are the same in this one, as are the director (J.P. McGowan), the screenwriter (Sally Winters), and the cinematographer (Hap Depew). I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they shot THE LAW OF THE PLAINS one week and THE MAN FROM NEVADA the next week. Tom Tyler plays rancher Jack Carter, whose neighbor is a rather shiftless sodbuster with a beautiful daughter (Natalie Joyce) and three sons, two of whom are scrappy adolescents and the other is a toddler. An evil cattle baron played by Al Ferguson has his eye on the sodbuster’s ranch and plans to get his hands on it in a swindle assisted by his crooked land recorder brother. Stalwart Tom Tyler is having none of that, of course, so the villain and his henchmen (one of them played by legendary stuntman and stunt coordinator Cliff Lyons) frame him for rustling and try to get the sheriff to arrest him. Chases, fistfights, and shootings ensue.

McGowan, who also had an acting role in the previous film, stays behind the camera this time and keeps things charging along in very fine fashion. There’s an excellent stunt early on where Tyler’s character stops a runaway wagon carrying the helpless toddler, and while I couldn’t be absolutely certain, I think he performed it himself. The script stretches credibility every now and then but has some fine dramatic moments and a very satisfying showdown at the end. Tyler has a natural screen presence that allows him to dominate every scene he’s in, and an actor I’m not familiar with, Bill Nolte, does a fine job as the comedy relief sidekick, as he does in the previous film.

This is another fine restoration job from Undercrank Productions with a top-notch new score from Ben Model. Depew’s photography looks great. At one point, I believe THE MAN FROM NEVADA was considered a lost film. I’m glad they found and restored it, because I really enjoyed it. The same outfit has done a set of two silent Tom Mix Westerns. I’ve ordered it from Amazon and look forward to watching them.

Review: Misfit Lil Hides Out - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

Misfit Lil returns in MISFIT LIL HIDES OUT, the fourth book in the excellent series by Chap O’Keefe (Keith Chapman). This one was published originally in hardback by Robert Hale in 2008, reprinted in large print by Ulverscroft in 2009, and now available in e-book and trade paperback editions. I always enjoy a visit with Misfit Lil, and this novel certainly lives up to expectations.

It begins on a rather grim note as a war party of renegade Apaches who have jumped the reservation massacre some settlers. Misfit Lil witnesses this atrocity and is able to help one of the potential victims, the wife of a soldier at the nearby fort, escape with her life.

This trouble brings a couple of obnoxious cavalry officers from back east to the fort. They’re there to take charge of the effort to round up the renegades, but instead, they quickly make enemies of some of the locals, including Lil. When one of them winds up dead, she’s blamed for the murder and has to take off for the badlands with both a sheriff’s posse and the cavalry in pursuit. Lil has to deal not only with those threats but also the Apaches, who are still on the loose and looking for more victims.

Chapman weaves these plot strands together with expert skill, leading to a final showdown that verges on the apocalyptic in its intense action. This is a great scene that also reveals a few surprising twists.

As a bonus, Chapman includes an article about female protagonists in Western fiction. Altogether, it makes for a very entertaining package and another outstanding adventure for the Princess of Pistoleers. If you’re a fan of traditional Westerns with a slightly gritty edge, you need to make the acquaintance of Miss Lilian Goodnight.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, December 10, 1943

This issue of SHORT STORIES is a bit of an oddity in that the cover by A.R. Tilburne doesn't feature a red sun, although there is a blob of red just above the muzzle of that nice-looking 1911. I like the cover quite a bit, even without a red sun. The line-up of authors inside this issue is really strong: H. Bedford-Jones, E. Hoffmann Price, Frank Richardson Pierce, James B. Hendryx, H.S.M. Kemp, and lesser-known Berton F. Cook and Harry Bridge. Hard to go wrong with any issue that includes HB-J, Price, Pierce, and Hendryx.

UPDATE: Yes, I suppose that could be the sun on the left, partially obscured by the foliage, but I didn't take that darker area to be a leaf. I think maybe Tilburne should have made that a little clearer. On the other hand, maybe if I was holding the actual pulp in my hands, it would be obvious. I don't mind admitting when I've missed something. I figured adding this mea culpa might be better than rewriting the whole post.