Racketeers of the Range

A large packing company is trying to obtain a monopoly by taking over the last small independent meat packer. Barney O'Dell, owner of the largest ranch, is trying to stop them. When the owner agrees to sell, Barney get a delay by forcing the small company to declare bankruptcy and having himself made receiver. Now the large company has to deal with Larry and when he refuses they resort to rustling.

Racketeers of the range is a light and entertaining b-western that stars the ever smiling George O' Brien who clashes with Marjorie Reynolds, a sharp-tongued spitfire, and has a conflict with Bruce Cabot, who plays a slippery villain. It's not strictly a western as it has cars - it's set in the 30's. There's some decent action that propels things along, and it ends with a satisfying climax on a calaboose. It's well-staged. There's a poignant look of a western trail street with horses and a car, modernity taking over the west. Change of times. Chills Wills provides the humour - there's an amusing scene where he tells a girl about his brave exploits but the flashbacks says the opposite. Quite an imaginatively funny sequence.

George O'Brien was under contract to RKO for several years, during which he made a pretty neat series of westerns. He had an easygoing Irish charm, was a good actor and a tremendous athlete, and his westerns were models of the B genre--efficiently but not cheaply made, fast-paced but not rushed, briskly directed, and leavened with touches of clever humor not often found in B westerns, where comedy was usually restricted to overacting sidekicks and forced slapstick. Unfortunately, this is not one of O'Brien's better entries. One of the problems is that much of the action (and there isn't all that much of it to begin with) takes place on railroad cars, and the fact that these scenes were shot on a studio soundstage is painfully obvious by the surprisingly shoddy use of rear projection. The subject matter itself--a big meat packing company trying to squeeze its smaller competitors out of business so it can have the market to itself--doesn't really lend itself well to the western genre, and the result is that stretches of the film are, frankly, boring. Director D. Ross Lederman cut his teeth on B westerns at Columbia, first as a second-unit director and then as a director of Tim McCoy westerns, but he can't really do all that much here, being restricted as he was to a soundstage for much of the "action." There's a gun battle shot on location which takes place on a cattle train that's being attacked by outlaws, but it doesn't last long and is actually not done all that well. O'Brien tries hard, but this one just really doesn't work. It's worth one look, maybe, but O'Brien has done far better.