Mark of the Spur

Amazingly bad but had to watch this since it was Miss Rich's last starring role. She was supposedly 32 years old here but looks older. No attempt to disguise her British accent - what was she thinking? Anyway, glad I got to see this, best fun was watching them deal with the snow which came and went and came back again. For those of you who watch a lot of these cheapo oaters from the 1930's, how many have you ever seen with honest to cripes snow on the ground? Just as I thought, exactly zero! I still have 84 characters to go, why would IMDb need 600 characters, makes no sense at all, just about there, done.

Young man decides to get a job as a riding boss on a ranch run by rough tough Hardshell Beckett (played by 1000 year old Lafe McKee) but the real boss of the ranch seems to be Beckett's adopted daughter Alice, who the kid tries to romance. When the kid arrives, so does Beckett's ex- wife and long lost son, whom Beckett suspects of trying to take over the ranch. Finding out that the kid might be a wanted outlaw, Beckett's son (along w/ two ranch hands that don't approve of their new riding boss) frames the kid for robbing Beckett's safe and stabbing the old man. How can the kid save himself and what secret is Beckett's ex hiding?

Custer, who has little acting ability to begin with, tries to go the Hoot Gibson route and play the likable kid in the modern west. Unfortunately, he is still not believable in the role. Lillian Rich seems to highbrow to appear in this below the barrel affair, but she does give some effort and is probably the only good thing in the film. Action is kept to a minimum and everything wraps up just as you would expect it to. Funny thing is that every B-western Lafe McKee played the father of a young girl, she was always in her late teens, here we believe that his son in George Cheseboro, who was in his mid 40's at this point.

Rating, 2 out of 10.