Texas-Desperados

Not a great deal to write home about here, Hostile Guns is every inch a late 1960s Oater clinging on to the fading embers of a genre that was at the time moving in another direction. It's directed by R.G. Springsteen and co-written by Steve Fisher, Sloan Nibley and James Edward Grant. It stars George Montgomery, Yvonne De Carlo, Tab Hunter, Brian Donlevy, John Russell and Leo Gordon. Music is by Jimmie Haskell and the Techniscope/Technicolor photography is by Lothrop Worth.

Plot has Montgomery as Sheriff Gid McCool, who is tasked with escorting a wagon of prisoners through the plains. Tricky since one of the prisoners has cohorts desperate to break him free, while another one is an old flame!

Tab Hunter is in the cast to bring down the average age of the cast, many of whom are going through the motions and are clearly in it to pick up a late in their career pay cheque. It's very much indicative of an A.C. Lyles production, the mixture of airy location shooting and crude rear projection work is most disconcerting. Brian Donlevy is front page billed but is in the film for two minutes, while the stunt doubles are ridiculously evident - which via the splicing are actually insulting. On the plus side there's a nice print available which showcases the good use of colour, and Gordon provides some good grumpy villainy, but it all trundles towards the inevitable climax, which all things considered isn't worth the wait. 5/10

The first half of this Western isn't bad at all. The dialogue is crisp, the situations believable, and it efficiently establishes all the central conflicts and relationships. But around the halfway point, things go terribly wrong. It's as if the filmmakers let their sons and daughters take over and complete the picture. Action scenes are poorly staged, characterizations become muddled and repetitious, plots and subplots get unsatisfyingly resolved in a strangely rushed, banal fashion. And the previously sharp dialogue gives way to howlers like "Mike, this could be your last chance to grow up!"

Interesting mish-mash of a cast however. I had often wondered who George Montgomery was, having seen his name listed for so many films, and while this was evidently made towards the end of his career, he's certainly a classicly square-jawed, masculine lead in the Clark Gable mold. Tab Hunter is okay as the rowdy young hotshot deputized by Sheriff Montgomery for a dangerous prisoner transport, and there are faint (very faint) echoes of the Wayne/Clift relationship in "Red River". Yvonne DeCarlo, though aging, is still believably fetching as the woman prisoner who drives a wedge between the two men.

I guess I should have known there was something fishy about this movie early on, judging by the God-awful stunt doubling done for Tab Hunter in his first fight scenes. The double, quite clearly and amusingly, doesn't look a thing like him.

What a cast! What a so-bad-it's-good movie! George Montgomery plays U.S. Marshall Gid McCool (dig that name!), who's in charge of transporting a wagon train of convicted felons to a state prison in Texas. Tab Hunter, playing his umpteenth juvenile role while in his mid-thirties, is his upstart of a deputy. (He's also got the most obvious stunt double you've ever seen!) Yvonne De Carlo, sporting the longest false eyelashes and giving the worst performance ever by an actress in a western, is one of the prisoners. Not a stereotype left unplayed!

In 1967's "Hostile Guns" George Montgomery plays a Texas sheriff who hires young troublemaker (Tab Hunter) to help him transport a handful of prisoners to the state penitentiary in another town. The captives include a burley tough guy (Leo Gordon), an embezzling railroad big shot (Robert Emhardt), an amiable Mexican (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez) and a woman who was forced to kill her no-good man (Yvonne DeCarlo). Gordon's character has relatives & friends who seek to break him free on the trip.

This is basically a C-Grade version of "Stagecoach," but with a paddy wagon full of presumed ne'er-do-wells rather than just the Ringo Kid. Montgomery is an excellent masculine protagonist and the rest of the cast is solid, but the movie's letdown by the low-budget and melodramatic script. Like I said in my title blurb, the movie plays like a mediocre TV Western, which can be observed by the studio-bound sets and location shooting at Vasquez Rocks, where a lot of TV shows were shooting at the time (and to this day). This shouldn't come as a surprise since the director has a long history in TV productions.

While the film is worth watching if you like the cast, its ineptness is sometimes glaring. Like the stuntman they use to replace Hunter in the longshots of a fistfight at the beginning where it's painfully obvious that the guy's not Hunter, to put it nicely. Speaking of this fight, the young punk takes on his out-of-shape uncle who appears to be at least 65 years old and the old guy holds his own and even appears to be winning. Why sure!

The film runs 91 minutes.

GRADE: C-

1967's HOSTILE GUNS was the 11th entry in producer A.C. Lyles's series of 13 Paramount B Westerns from 1963 to 1967 designed to meet the huge demand in Europe but quick playoff in the US. Director R.G. Springsteen is at the helm for the sixth and last time, from another Steve Fisher script, one of the 9 he eventually did. The main attraction of these 'geezer' oaters are the plethora of longtime veteran players in need of a good paycheck, led by Richard Arlen, the all time champ who did 11 (including this one) and Lon Chaney (sadly absent here). The top slot was typically reserved for a select few (Barry Sullivan, Rory Calhoun, Dana Andrews or Howard Keel), which makes this an anomaly with the lone appearance of George Montgomery, whose solid credentials in a cliched part are crucial in making this as watchable as it is (he starred in the TV series CIMARRON CITY). As Sheriff Gid McCool it's his job to transport a quartet of convicted felons on a four day journey to a Texas prison in Huntsville, hiring young hothead Tab Hunter to ride shotgun as deputy because he knew the boy's father to be a good man. The captives are not really an interesting lot, Leo Gordon cast to type as a vicious child murderer, Yvonne De Carlo the woman with a past who claims self defense in killing her abusive partner, Robert Emhardt the corrupt railroad baron who, ahem, insists he was 'railroaded' for political reasons, and Pedro Gonzales Gonzales as (what else?) an amiable Mexican thief who hopes to learn a useful trade behind bars. Following close behind is John Russell as Gordon's brother and James Craig as his cousin, determined to bushwhack the sheriff and spring their kin. Smaller roles are essayed by Brian Donlevy as the town marshal, Donald Barry, Roy Jenson, and Fuzzy Knight, all of whom had worked for Lyles before. Characterization is weak and action scenes poorly staged, theatergoers would do better with an episode of THE HIGH CHAPARRAL at home on the boob tube. Yvonne De Carlo is at least still an eyeful but no player can stand out with this hoary scenario, its nondescript and generic title most fitting.