herrschenk

Exciting, straightforward documentary on the regional SoCal instrumental surf music phenomenon of the early 1960s and how the music is still loved and played around the world. If you loved that music, you will love the film. Edited true to the driving beat of the music and the pure joy of twanging, reverberating Fender guitars and the absence of lyrics. Great to hear Dick Dale's stories, hear from members of Eddie and the Showmen, The Chantal's, The Surfaris, The Bel-Airs and to see Lloyd Thaxton after too many decades. And the truth behind Jimi Hendrix's pronouncement "...and you'll never hear surf music again." It's bitchin'.

An anemic entry in the Skeeters series. Sure, there's lots of hard riding and chases. Even big chases with lots of horsemen. And a big explosion with a cool runaway wagon stunt. But it's still spiritless and by the numbers. It's the 41st of 51 oaters in the Republic series and the Mesquiteers were running out of steam. Some of that may be credited to Lester Orlebeck, a prodigious film editor but only occasional director at Republic.

Tom Tyler delivers the most joy in this outing, derived from seeing him do the majority of his own stunts, with several exceptions captured in wide shots and stunts obviously too dangerous to risk putting one of the stars out of commission.

It is also a pleasure to watch the horsemanship of Tyler and Bob Steele, who, by this point, had been in the saddle since silent films.

But the script is old stuff, three Civil War veterans coming home to Texas. (The Cimarron in the title is never mentioned in the dialogue.) The trio finds unscrupulous carpetbaggers are using bloated taxes to bleed locals dry. But holes abound, especially when people do something that makes no sense, only to be explained away with a quick line of dialogue.

An interesting angle never explored is that Stony Brooke fought for the north while Tucson Smith and Lullaby Joslin were confederates. Yes, this is a B-western concentrating on action, not characterization, but it missed an opportunity to highlight the bond and camaraderie that was a Mesquiteer trademark.

The Mesquiteers had been hard riding for six years by the time of West of Cimarron and had undergone a lot of cast changes. In the next year, 1942, the trio would experience another cast switch. Rufe Davis would leave. He said he could never shake off the shadow of Max Terhune. Davis said he was always being asked by regional distributors why he didn't have his dummy. Terhune was a ventriloquist and his doll Elmer was featured in all the early films. Davis was replaced by Jimmie Dodd. The next year, 1943, Republic pulled the plug on the series and The Three Mesquiteers rode into the sunset. Forever.

Sad not to see any reviews here of this hard hitting six-part documentary about the child sex abuse scandal in a small eastern Washington community which took on a nature disturbingly similar to the Salem Witch trials. Like the notorious trials that took place in 1692-1693 in colonial Massachusetts, the initial focus of the Wenatchee abuse investigations was small but soon spread to scores of accused and took on an aura of mass hysteria. How could this be happening in our town?

It is both maddening and terrifying as one watches how a single unqualified policeman, employees of the local office of the State of Washington Department of Social and Health Services and a supportive mayor accuse more and more parents, take away their children and secure convictions with prison time. It is Kafkaesque.

The filmmakers dig deep, telling the story in slow, meticulous detail, unveiling, first, a sensational story of increasingly remarkable proportions, and, then, as the great lie begins to unravel. In between, good people suspect the claims. They become vocal. They raise concerns, only to find themselves also accused of child sexual abuse.

If this were a fictional movie, it would be criticized as hysterically unrealistic and needlessly sensational. But it's not fiction, prompting the question, how could this happen in our nation?