Movie Review: Texas Rangers Ride Again (1940)

A B-grade western, Texas Rangers Ride Again provides decent entertainment but never threatens to rise above its lowly status.

Ellen 'Slats' Dangerfield (Ellen Drew) returns to her family's massive Texas ranch after 10 years away and finds her grandma Cecilia (May Robson) dealing with a major crisis. Cattle is disappearing in large numbers with no clues left behind, and none of the family members and foremen appear to have answers. Cecilia turns to the Texas Rangers, and they dispatch undercover agents Jim Kingston (John Howard) and Mace Townsley (Broderick Crawford) to investigate.

Kingston pretends to be wanted outlaw The Pecos Kid and infiltrates the crew of Joe Yuma (Anthony Quinn), a disloyal cowboy supposedly working for the Dangerfields but actually coordinating cattle rustling on a massive scale on behalf of a black market cartel. Jim starts a rocky romantic pursuit of the feisty Ellen and has to find a way to bring the bandits to justice.

Directed by James P. Hogan and a sequel to 1936's The Texas Rangers, this is a lightweight and second-rate programmer, clocking in at 68 minutes. Given the rudimentary budget and constrained production values the film rustles up adequate and undemanding entertainment, mixing basic action with a steady stream of humour and flighty romance.

The setting is actually the modern day of 1940, giving Texas Rangers Ride Again an interesting but still disconcerting past-meets-present dimension. Rural Texas still looks the way it did fifty years past, but in addition to horses and six shooters both the Rangers and the bad guys have cars, trucks and wireless mobile radio transmitters at their disposal to help navigate and communicate across the vast swaths of cattle land.

The plot is standard fare undercover police work, as the Rangers infiltrate Joe Yuma's gang to uncover the impressively industrial-scale cattle rustling operation. The story is peppered by the playfully romantic tug of war between Ranger Jim and the likeable Ellen, who makes no secret of wanting to be anywhere but Texas.

Anthony Quinn receives ninth billing, but his role is easily among the most prominent in the film. May Robson dominates her scenes as the earthy family matron, raging at the inadequacies of all around her and contributing plenty of humour as she looks for a love of her own. Akim Tamiroff as the loyal housekeeper with embryonic English skills adds to the surprisingly deep talent pool.

Amusing and forgettable, Texas Rangers Ride Again hops over the extremely low bar it sets for itself.

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Movie Review: Man In The Saddle (1951)

A sturdy western with appealing artistic touches, Man In The Saddle does not stray far from genre conventions but carries a stylistic kick.

Rich landowner Will Isham (Alexander Knox) is about to marry Laurie (Joan Leslie), the former sweetheart of the much more humble cattle rancher Owen Merritt (Randolph Scott), who is still very much in love with Laurie. Will is keen to extend his influence and eliminate all competition both real and perceived, by good means or foul. His band of enforcers is led by Texan Fay Dutcher (Richard Rober). Meanwhile, Hugh Clagg (John Russell), another of Will's men, is lusting after independent cattle woman Nan Melotte (Ellen Drew), but she only has eyes for Owen.

Will goes about buying out adjacent landowners, but when Owen refuses to sell, their conflict becomes violent with a series of back-and-forth raids, murders and reprisals, and Laurie has to decide whether she can stand by her new husband. When Owen is wounded and forced to flee to the hills, it is Nan who helps him out, which further inflames Hugh's rage.

Notably directed by Andre DeToth, Man In The Saddle features noir and suspense touches rarely seen in a western. Just when what seems to be a traditional saloon shootout scene is about to ignite, DeToth turns out all the lights, allowing the bullet flashes and little else to tell the story. Several other scenes feature backlighting, silhouettes and shadows, heightening the drama.

In the film's most famous scene, a prolonged fist fight between Owen Merritt and Hugh Clagg literally brings down the roof and extends for hundreds of yards down a snowy embankment. As the punches fly, DeToth finds the time to inject a classic suspense element featuring a shotgun trapped under fallen debris.

The plot is only slightly above average, but the two overlapping romantic triangles add a dash of originality. Laurie is unusually clear that her marriage to Will is all about convenience and loveless social climbing, leaving all the threads hanging with Owen. Meanwhile the down-to-earth Nan is exactly Owen's type of woman, if only he can peel his eyes off Laurie and rescue Nan from Hugh. DeToth doesn't allow the romances to bog down the film but they do provide a potent power source.

Also adding to the film's appeal is Will's soft spoken, clearly insecure but immensely powerful villain, a classic example of a man who undeservedly has everything but won't be satisfied until he pushes too far for his own good.

Elsewhere Man In The Saddle is a straightforward 87 minutes of stock acting and gunplay or fisticuffs at regular intervals. The second half runs out of new ideas and defaults to raid and counter raid, rinse and repeat to run down the clock, with several scenes of riders on the plains extending well past what is necessary to pad the already thin running time. But with DeToth at the helm, the Man In The Saddle is just that bit more intriguing that he needed to be.

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