Movie Review: Kansas Raiders (1950)

A tone-deaf western, Kansas Raiders focuses on Jesse James falling under the influence of Civil War mercenary William Quantrill. In portraying one outlaw murderer as horrified by the actions of a bloodthirsty lunatic, the film has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

With the Civil War raging, Jesse James (Audie Murphy), his brother Frank, the Younger brothers and Kit Dalton (Tony Curtis) are drifting through Kansas, looking for the headquarters of renegade paramilitary leader William Quantrill (Brian Donlevy). Jesse is seeking revenge against the Union side for burning his home and killing his family, while his men are just looking for steady work and income. Near Lawrence, Jesse and the gang finally find and join the Quantrill Raiders, who are running an indiscriminate campaign of terror.

Quantrill likes what he sees in Jesse and gives him a leadership position. Jesse falls hard under the influence of Quantrill, believing all his self-aggrandizing hokum about military strategy and winning the war for the Confederates. But Jesse is soon exposed to what Quantrill really is: a deluded old man leading his ragtag band of killers on raids to murder innocent farmers and pillage their belongings. Jesse also meets and starts to fall in love with Kate Clark (Marguerite Chapman), Quantrill's maybe former lover, and she tries to persuade him to break ranks. But Jesse remains part of the raiders as the war grinds on, Quantrill's troop strength is degraded, and a showdown looms.

Directed by Ray Enright, Kansas Raiders is a low budget, low talent western loosely inspired by real events, trading on Audie Murphy's celebrity status and little else. The colours are rich and some of the scenery is not bad, and there may be a germ of a good story about the power of wily despicable charlatans to wield influence over impressionable young men. But the movie has neither the smarts nor the inclination to delve into substantive topics with any conviction. Instead the dialogue is clipped and superficial, the execution rudimentary, and the character motivations singularly basic.

Even when Jesse questions his allegiance to Quantrill, the Robert L. Richards script gives up on any interesting evolutions. Jesse and his gang stick with the Raiders but allow themselves to grumble about his methods, and that's the end of any dilemma. The rest is just about rudimentary killing and circular talk until there are no more men to kill and nothing left to say. The action set-pieces are awkward, but the romance elements between Jesse and the barely defined character of Kate Clark are even worse.

Audie Murphy gives no indication of any actual acting talent, and goes through the movie wearing the one expression of a young man trying to act older than he is. Brian Donlevy is a bit better but teeters on the edge of caricature. Marguerite Chapman provides ample evidence to vindicate her failure to successfully transition from serials to more serious roles. Tony Curtis gets a few lines in one of his many forgettable early screen appearances.

Kansas Raiders is a film as useless as William Quantrill's imaginary cause.

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Movie Review: Sierra (1950)

A basic B-grade western, Sierra looks good but is an otherwise stiff and by-the-numbers adventure about family redemption.

Ring Hassard (Audie Murphy) lives with his father Jeff (Dean Jagger) in seclusion, deep in the Sierra mountains. They break wild horses for a living, and their only contact with the nearest town is through local drifter Lonesome (Burl Ives). Trouble starts when independent-minded tough girl Riley Martin (Wanda Hendrix) stumbles onto the Hassards, and uncovers the family secret: Jeff is a fugitive from justice, and Ring has been raised in isolation and never seen a woman up close. Nevertheless, Riley and Ring start to fall in love.

When Jeff hurts himself trying to tame a wild horse, Ring, Lonesome and Riley try to help by getting a doctor to his side, but their efforts only reveal the Hassard hideout to the local sheriff. Riley wants to be a lawyer and believes that she can help prove Jeff's innocence. But convincing a town full of angry folks that the long-wanted fugitive was wrongly convicted will be no easy task, especially when Riley's suitor Duke (Elliott Reid) decides that Ring is an inconvenient threat.

Directed by Alfred E. Green, Sierra has a few decent ideas scattered over its shortish 83 minutes of running time, but the movie is otherwise barely above the level of a television western episode. The characters are wooden, the action routine, the dialogue stilted and the set-pieces contrived. The film does look good thanks to rich colours, and the locations around the Hassard household evoke a sense of solitude and provide plenty of ambush opportunities.

Green occupies quite a few minutes with scenes of galloping wide horses, and appears particularly taken with the dominant black mare that leads the rest of the herd. The horses are supposed to represent the Hassards' embrace of freedom and their tenuous remaining connections to civilization, but the thundering hooves eventually just get boring.

The cast is interesting, but underperforms. Audie Murphy's idea of acting here is to stand rigidly and stare into the distance, oblivious that he is unable to convey neither intensity nor thoughtfulness. Burl Ives is saddled with an old guitar and a mule, and is forced to sing a few godawful songs. Dean Jagger is the only character with a backstory, but while Jeff Hassard spends most of the film on his back, his old tale of being wrongly accused of murder is underdeveloped.

And Wanda Hendrix (Mrs. Audie Murphy at the time) never gains traction as a credible person, and cannot be taken seriously whether she is pretending to be a woman lost in the wilderness, a lawyer, or the love interest. James Arness and Tony Curtis appear in small early roles as members of the Coulter family, also hiding out from the law.

The mountains are high and the colours vivid, but Sierra is just too meager to matter.

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