Taggart

One of those movies where you get the impression you would have been better off reading the (Louis L'Amour) book. Shoot a gun, the horse throws his rider. Crack shots from people firing a revolver. Often while riding a horse. I watched it because I was reading David Carradine's Endless Highway autobiography, and it's his first film. He looks sufficiently evil, so I did enjoy parts.

Tony Young's family is killed and his cattle stampeded by Emile Meyer, Young gets him in a fair fight, but since he's the villain, he doesn't care about the niceties. He offers gabby gunslinger Dan Duryea a lot of money to kill Young, driving him into the desert and Apache attack.

Although Young is top-billed, it's Duryea who commands the audience's excellent attention. This late Shaky A western is well directed by R. G. Springsteen, with some great Technicolor camerawork by Wiliam Margulies. It's the penultimate film for former B heart throb Dick Foran, and the first for David Carradine.

Tony Young stars in the title role of TAGGART (1964), a rancher's son who embarks on a mission of revenge after his parents are killed by the son of a town boss. After tracking down the culprit and killing him in front of his father, he is pursued for much of the film by a professional killer, Jay Jason (Dan Duryea), hired by the dying town boss and provided with a dubious warrant. The two men wind up in an abandoned Spanish mission occupied by Adam Stark (Dick Foran), an older man with a young Mexican wife, Consuelo (Elsa Cardenas), and a daughter from a previous marriage, Miriam (Jean Hale). The whole middle section of the film is essentially a five-character drama. The Stark family has a secret, one which compels hot-to-trot Consuelo to come on heavy, first to Taggart and then, after Taggart rebuffs her advances, to Jason, in the hopes that one of them will help her leave the mission with a cache of hidden wealth. An attack by rampaging Apaches complicates things. They all flee, but not all together, headed to a nearby fort for an action-packed finale.

The editors use lots of footage from other Universal color westerns, including one with a cattle drive and one with Indian attacks on a wagon train and a cavalry fort. Even the long shots, with the main characters riding against panoramic backdrops, seem to be taken from other movies, requiring the costumes in the new footage to match the previous footage. I wish I knew which westerns the footage came from. I've probably seen them, but I'd love to see them again. Also, the Spanish mission in which the Starks reside looks more like a hacienda to me. It's a bit of a stretch for the characters to call it a mission. Still, it's an enjoyable western which moves well and is enacted by a cast of players who know how to make this kind of thing work, all supervised by a director who's an old hand at this.

Dan Duryea plays his character as quite talkative and gregarious, rather unusual for such a greedy and cold-blooded character. He doesn't display much charm, so he never exactly fools anyone. It's a rather odd performance by the veteran heavy, but it keeps the confrontations between him and the more stoic Taggart quite lively. Both Duryea and Dick Foran had been under contract to Universal Pictures back in the 1940s. They'd previously co-starred in AL JENNINGS OF OKLAHOMA (1951), where they played brothers. David Carradine makes his debut here in a silent role as an ill-fated gunslinger. Elsa Cardenas is sexy and attractive in the femme fatale role. She only did a handful of films and TV episodes in Hollywood in the 1950s and '60s, but instead spent most of her long career in her native Mexico, starring in movies and TV novelas (soap operas) and evidently attaining a level of stardom she couldn't have gotten in Hollywood. (She's apparently still active in Mexican television.) Even so, I wish she'd spent more time in Hollywood. I would love to have seen her in more westerns.

Tony Young never managed to achieve much in the way of stardom and spent most of his career in TV guest spots and supporting roles in occasional feature films. He's quite good here, boasting a deep, soothing voice which could easily charm the ladies, a tall frame that suited him well for westerns, and a straightforward, confident manner. With his dark good looks and heavy-lidded eyes, he could have made a splash in Italian westerns like so many of his peers were doing in the 1960s and probably could have had a much bigger career as a result.

This violent revenge western directed by perennial action workhorse R. G. Springsteen benefits from the handsome colour production you'd expect from Universal in the fifties and sixties, reflected in the sixties glamour of the female contingent; which includes Elsa Cardenas, who five years later got the Peckinpah treatment in 'The Wild Bunch'.

Originating in a novel by Louis L'Amour, the meaner, uglier westerns that were soon to follow are anticipated by the trio of heavies led by Dan Duryea flanked by Tom Reese and a young David Carradine, the latter making his screen debut.

It doesn't make a lot of sense but you keep watching.

Director R.G. Springsteen spent many years at Republic Pictures turning out efficient little B westerns, and his expertise is evident in this crisp, sharp little western. From around 1960 to about 1966 Universal churned out a stream of quickie westerns, most of them run-of-the-mill at best and low-grade junk at worst. This tight little oater, however, falls into neither category. A cast of western veterans like Emile Meyer, Ray Teal, Dick Foran and the great Dan Duryea, and a more than competent leading man in Tony Young, combine with a good story and Springsteen's firm hand to make this one of the best B westerns to come out of Universal in that period. Young plays Taggart, a man who gunned down the son of a powerful local rancher who led a gang that attacked his camp and murdered his parents. The dead son's dying father sends hired killers out to track down and kill Taggart. Fleeing through Apache territory, he comes to the aid of an old man and his daughter defending their gold mine against rampaging Indians. Young reminds you of Gary Cooper in his early years, although a bit more animated, and it's a shame his career never really went anywhere, as he's quite good in this (he also shot another western around this time, "He Rides Tall," and is equally as good in that one). Long-time cowboy actor Dick Foran plays the father, and the gorgeous Jean Hale--who years later married actor Dabney Coleman--is his daughter. The story is interesting, the scenery is pretty and Duryea is--as always--tremendous fun to watch. There's some sharp action, although a good chunk of it is obvious stock footage from other westerns, and things are resolved satisfactorily--though somewhat abruptly--at the end, something that didn't always happen in Universal's westerns of the period. All in all, a very watchable little B picture. You could do a lot worse than spending some time on this one.