Bad Lands

I am so amazed by this Lew Landers's film, so terrific from such a prolific grade B director. I am still astonished. It looks like an Edward L Cahn from the thirties, his best period. It's a posse western, with a solid and riveting body count, solid characterization and solid story. Yes, I can't realize that Lew Landers made this, for RKO pictures. It is painful to realize that so many lost films from this era still remain in vaults, somewhere in warehouses, in a remote suburb...Movie passion saves so many surprises, and this one is the best example. I won't say it looks like a John Ford's movie but not so far from THE LOST PATROL, which was not exactly a western but not far either.

RKO Studios in 1939 made a real honey of a B western in a remake of their earlier classic, The Lost Patrol. This one could easily have been entitled The Lost Posse.

Leading the posse going out into the Bad Lands in pursuit of a fugitive who is also a mixed race white and Indian is sheriff Robert Barrat who normally did not play roles as decent as he is here. He's got a collection of emergency deputies who are not some of the best of God's creations.

The posse after some days in the Arizona desert finally gets to a water hole and they rest up for a spell. They probably needed, surely their horses did. But the Apache Indians gather and soon begin picking off the posse members one at a time. Tension mounts with the men of the posse and we learn quite a bit about the character of the members.

Oh and one other thing. One of the reasons out intrepid band lingers is that while at the oasis, two of them who are normally prospectors, Andy Clyde and Francis Ford, discover a rich vein of silver. That brings the greed out on top of everything else. That's a twist that wasn't in The Lost Patrol.

Besides those mentioned such folks as Noah Beery, Jr., Paul Hurst, Addison Richards, Douglas Walton, Francis McDonald, and Robert Coote are in the cast. This may be a B western, but it's not one for the Saturday matinée kiddie trade. The reason the posse is chasing their culprit is that he's guilty of rape, not a subject normally covered by Roy Rogers or Gene Autry in their films.

The film is directed by B western movie veteran Lew Landers and moves at a nice brisk pace. Bad Lands may not have any marquee movie names, but it does have a great story and a more than competent cast.

A topnotch ensemble cast and brilliant photography by Frank Redman make this little-known RKO western a sleeper that can only be compared to John Ford's Stagecoach, released the same year.

A posse pursues Apache Jack (played by John Payne) into the dessert, in a western variation of The Lost Patrol. The result is a nice variety of types played by veteran -- and up-and-coming -- character actors.

While Ford had begun using Monument Valley at this time, this movie was shot at Mount Whitney -- after seeing it in a hundred movies from Gunga Din, released the same year, on downward, you get so you can recognize the boulders. But while the prints of Ford's movie are pretty battered, this one is nearly pristine: the beautiful shadows producing shots like Hurrell portraits. See what a black and white movie is supposed to look like!

So this goes to the top of my list of sleepers. If you get a chance to see it, do so and let me know what you think.

"Bad Lands" is one of those rare movies that features no big-name actors in the cast ("The Mask of Demetrius" comes to mind as another example). That is not to say that the cast is composed of unknown actors or amateurs. Instead, the entire cast is made up of actors with well-known faces that appeared in hundreds of films, though usually in supporting roles. However, it is probably just as well that no well-known star, such as John Wayne or Randolph Scott, was placed at the head of this cast, because their presence would only have served to overbalance things, and ruin the ensemble nature of the story.

Yes, it is granted that "Bad Lands" is a western redo of John Ford's famous 1934 film, "The Lost Patrol". The basic plot of "The Lost Patrol", which is so well known that it scarcely needs mention, seems to have been a favorite source for story-lines in Hollywood in those days, and particularly during the early days of World War II, when it was recycled in such films as "Bataan" and "Sahara". And yes, it is granted that "Bad Lands" was produced as a relatively low-budget B-picture, and was further handicapped by being limited to a running time of only a little over an hour. Nevertheless, it is definitely a very superior B-picture, and one of the better re- hashes of the now-cliché "The Lost Patrol" story, which was not yet regarded as so much of a cliché in 1939.

Like a lot of movies produced during the 1930s, "Bad Lands" would never be remade today in the same form because it would be regarded as far too politically incorrect. The "Native Americans" are depicted unequivocally as bad guys, and the only "Latino" in the cast is depicted as being off his head (although the fact that his wife had recently been raped and murdered by the bad guy does provide a plausible excuse for his madness). It is also interesting to note that there are no women in the cast, a comparative rarity even in those days, and something the producers would never be permitted to get away with today. In addition, not one of the cast is African American, something else the producers would never be permitted to get away with today.

Although "Bad Lands" is ostensibly an ensemble production, the leader of the cast is played by Robert Barrat, a veteran actor who portrayed a side variety of different types of characters in hundreds of films from the 1910s to the 1960s. Ironically, perhaps his best-remembered performance was in the titular title-role of the well-known 1936 movie version of "The Last of the Mohicans", in which he portrayed a "Native-American".

"Bad Lands" may not be the best or most famous of Western movies, but is better than most, and is still worth a look. This may have been a "B" picture, but it definitely rates as a "B-Plus".

If you didn't know this was a remake of "The Lost Patrol" it might be passable, but that picture had tension, a better script and had some big Hollywood names in key roles. "Bad Lands" is a pale imitation in every respect - maybe the Foreign Legion is a better setting for the story, instead of the Old West.

The cast of character actors assembled here, especially Robert Barrat and Addison Richards, try mightily but don't have the starpower of Boris Karloff, Victor McLaglen and Reginald Denny. And Robert Coote? what is a Brit with a distinctly British accent doing in the old west? Peculiar, but not enough to offset the steady stream of talk and more talk that riddles the movie. The only repeat performer from "Lost Patrol" to "Bad Lands" is Douglas Walton, who played a young, effete British soldier in the former and here plays a young, effete cowboy - same role, different backdrop.

I am second to no one in my affection for westerns, but this might have needed a different director and screenwriter to punch it up. "The Lost Patrol" was made in 1934 - what a difference four years can make.