Tierra maldita

RKO Studios in 1939 made a real honey of a B western in a remake of their earlier classic, The Lost Patrol. This one could easily have been entitled The Lost Posse.

Leading the posse going out into the Bad Lands in pursuit of a fugitive who is also a mixed race white and Indian is sheriff Robert Barrat who normally did not play roles as decent as he is here. He's got a collection of emergency deputies who are not some of the best of God's creations.

The posse after some days in the Arizona desert finally gets to a water hole and they rest up for a spell. They probably needed, surely their horses did. But the Apache Indians gather and soon begin picking off the posse members one at a time. Tension mounts with the men of the posse and we learn quite a bit about the character of the members.

Oh and one other thing. One of the reasons out intrepid band lingers is that while at the oasis, two of them who are normally prospectors, Andy Clyde and Francis Ford, discover a rich vein of silver. That brings the greed out on top of everything else. That's a twist that wasn't in The Lost Patrol.

Besides those mentioned such folks as Noah Beery, Jr., Paul Hurst, Addison Richards, Douglas Walton, Francis McDonald, and Robert Coote are in the cast. This may be a B western, but it's not one for the Saturday matinée kiddie trade. The reason the posse is chasing their culprit is that he's guilty of rape, not a subject normally covered by Roy Rogers or Gene Autry in their films.

The film is directed by B western movie veteran Lew Landers and moves at a nice brisk pace. Bad Lands may not have any marquee movie names, but it does have a great story and a more than competent cast.

Apacheria Land of the Apaches is the setting for this remake of the Lost Patrol which was set in... Iraq! Here frontier characters duel the Apaches and each other for survival in a merciless landscape. Except for the setting and the Americanization of the characters it is a scene by scene retelling of John Ford's film. The cast members are all familiar faces film character actors with the emphasis on actor instead of Star. The film was probably a second feature tryout for its director and some cast members. Solid but not top drawer. A nice change would've been showing the warriors of Apache Jack's band of renegades reactions to their own losses. This film and it's predecessors the Ford film and the Soviet film that may have inspired them Ten would be seen in Zoltan Korda's Sahara with Humphrey Bogart, The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, Duel at Diablo,and Ulzana's Raid.

The production certainly saves on make-up since there's not a woman in sight. It's all about a 10-man posse setting out after a bad man, but ending up mouse-trapped by Apaches in dry desert badlands. The movie plays much better if you haven't seen The Lost Patrol (1934) of which this is a virtual remake with a transposed setting. The premise is a good one as we get to know the posse members before they get picked off by the shadowy Apaches. Barrat is excellent as the stalwart sheriff, showing why he was such a fixture in movies of the 30's and 40's. Addison Richards shines too, as a tough guy, before becoming the more familiar silver- haired business executive of the 40's and 50's. And, of course, there's the lugubrious Andy Clyde, along with a rather shifty Noah Beery Jr. of Rockford Files fame.

Unfortunately, the wagon-load of tension coming from the premise is not equaled on screen since events unfold rather loosely, without the kind of tension that John Ford gets, for example, in The Lost Patrol. As a result, the movie is more interesting than riveting; at the same time, when pay-off's occur, there's not the involvement that makes for memorable viewing. And I think it a mistake for both this film and the 1934 one to show the attackers in the end. Instead, let them remain an unseen "force of nature" since that's how they're portrayed to that point. Nonetheless, this is a Western that certainly doesn't follow the formula horse operas of the day.

In passing—I don't know if it's the presence of Paul Hurst and Francis Ford or maybe the posse theme, but the movie reminds me in ways of the classic Ox-Bow Incident of 1943.

A topnotch ensemble cast and brilliant photography by Frank Redman make this little-known RKO western a sleeper that can only be compared to John Ford's Stagecoach, released the same year.

A posse pursues Apache Jack (played by John Payne) into the dessert, in a western variation of The Lost Patrol. The result is a nice variety of types played by veteran -- and up-and-coming -- character actors.

While Ford had begun using Monument Valley at this time, this movie was shot at Mount Whitney -- after seeing it in a hundred movies from Gunga Din, released the same year, on downward, you get so you can recognize the boulders. But while the prints of Ford's movie are pretty battered, this one is nearly pristine: the beautiful shadows producing shots like Hurrell portraits. See what a black and white movie is supposed to look like!

So this goes to the top of my list of sleepers. If you get a chance to see it, do so and let me know what you think.

If you didn't know this was a remake of "The Lost Patrol" it might be passable, but that picture had tension, a better script and had some big Hollywood names in key roles. "Bad Lands" is a pale imitation in every respect - maybe the Foreign Legion is a better setting for the story, instead of the Old West.

The cast of character actors assembled here, especially Robert Barrat and Addison Richards, try mightily but don't have the starpower of Boris Karloff, Victor McLaglen and Reginald Denny. And Robert Coote? what is a Brit with a distinctly British accent doing in the old west? Peculiar, but not enough to offset the steady stream of talk and more talk that riddles the movie. The only repeat performer from "Lost Patrol" to "Bad Lands" is Douglas Walton, who played a young, effete British soldier in the former and here plays a young, effete cowboy - same role, different backdrop.

I am second to no one in my affection for westerns, but this might have needed a different director and screenwriter to punch it up. "The Lost Patrol" was made in 1934 - what a difference four years can make.