The Fighting Marshal

A better-than-average B-movie thanks to some nice touches from D. Ross Lederman, a director with whom Western star Tim McCoy did some of his best work. McCoy plays a prisoner who escapes in order to prove his innocence without realising that he has just received a pardon from the Governor. The acting is pretty woeful - bad egg Red Larkin comes across as amusing rather than menacing thanks to the broad delivery of Matthew Betz - and, as was often the case with these low-budget oaters, the costumes are all over the place with cowboys of the Old West interacting with women wearing modern 1930s fashions.

Red and Tim break jail and go on the lam. Tim (McCoy) was framed so he's really innocent of wrongdoing. Red, however, is a confirmed criminal and a meanie. Red kills a marshal, and Tim impersonates the lawman so he can better find the guys who framed him and also get a mine payroll that rightfully belongs to him. Naturally, trouble ensues.

Despite the jailbreak opening, the first part is pretty slow, even taking a couple minutes to show breakfast being prepared. The second part is where the action picks up, but the movie's as much plot as it is action. Director Lederman films with more imagination than usual for these oaters. One sequence is quite striking. Tim pushes Alice (Gulliver) in a swing so that she appears to be flying off the screen and into our laps. It's an early version of a 3-D effect, but without the 3-D. Anyway, McCoy plays an interesting non-clichéd hero, in the biggest white hat on screen. So there's no doubt he's really a good guy, even if he keeps Red around. All in all, the matinée special remains an antique, but not without its points of interest.

In the 1950s, a small company bought up a lot of old B-westerns and chopped them to pieces in order to fit them into a television format of one hour. This often meant removing the original titles and replacing them with crappy ones to trim a minute or two from the film. In the case of "The Fighting Marshal", however, they screwed up and misspelled it "The Fighting Marshall". Interestingly, when the captioner recently created closed captions, they obviously saw the title and copied the same mistake! Still, whichever you call it, "The Fighting Marshal" or "The Fighting Marshall" (meaning a guy whose surname is Marshall), it's still a decent little film.

The film begins with Tim Benton (McCoy) in prison!! Considering he's supposed to be a nice-guy cowboy here, this certainly IS a surprise. However, you soon learn he's been framed and the warden has learned that Benton is to be pardoned. But, before anyone can tell Tim, he and a real baddie, Red Larkin, escape!

Soon after their escape, they are captured by a lawman, Marshal Bob Dinsmore. Dinsmore is planning on taking them to the town where he's about to be installed as their new lawman. But the escapees get the jump on him. Tim decides to impersonate the Marshal, though what to do with the real one is a serious plot problem. No problem- -Larkin murders him while Tim is in town.

Once installed as the new lawman, Marshal 'Dinsmore' (Tim) proves himself to be very effective and tough. He also soon discovers the same two men who lied to have him convicted--and he catches them committing more crimes and arrests them. While they can vouch for Tim being innocent, remember that the law actually already KNOWS this. The other glitch in all this is Larkin--he's a thug and needs killing!

This film has a lot going for it--much more than a typical B- western. The plot isn't filled with the usual clichés (such as a guy who's in prison but is really a federal agent under cover!), the fight scenes are awfully good and the shooting probably done by McCoy himself, as he was a champion shooter in real life. Well worth seeing.