Murió como los hombres

Riding on the Wrong Side of the Law, Randolph Scott Plays a Gang Member, Bank Robber On the Run.

The Violence is Cutting Edge with Plenty of Gun-Battles and some Brutal Fisticuffs.

In Act II Scott Tries to Get Married and Settle Down.

But HIs Past and Marshal George Macready with His Relentless Posse will Have None of it.

Action-Packed with High-Contrast Cinematography Filled with Guns Blazing and Hoses at a Gallop.

It's an Energetic Entry in the Genre and the Tone Foreshadows the New Decades Dedication to Make the Western More Adult.

Not Quite Up-There with the Films Scott did with Budd Boetticher but it is an Above Average Movie.

With Help from a Good Supporting Cast....

Macready (who also surprisingly does voice-over) John Ireland, Noah Beery Jr., Jock Mahoney, and Virginia Huston.

A Big Production that Climaxes with a Massive Horse Herd Stampede.

If it has a Weakness its the Comedy Relief of Charles Kemper and Dona Drake.

The Film Pulls Few Punches and One Gets the Sense that the Approach here was to Ratchet Things Up a Notch and it Shows.

You Will Find Some Stuff You Won't See in Any Other Randolph Scott Westerns.

A Must-See for Western Fans and for All Others....

Worth a Watch.

A year after hunting down Bill Doolin in Return of the Badmen, Randolph Scott makes a rare appearance on the wrong side of the law as the same notorious outlaw in The Doolins of Oklahoma. The writers pay only passing attantion to the facts in this solid programmer efficiently directed by Gordon Douglas, and Scott makes a hugely sympathetic hero, who is tricked back into a life of crime by his old gang after going straight with preacher's daughter Virginia Huston.

A laconic black & white western, rather simple by Randolph Scott's standards, the action including lots of riding about and and an eye-watering punch-up.

An excellent supporting cast includes a feisty young Dona Drake and George MacReady refreshingly playing a goodie for once.

The Doolins of Oklahoma (AKA: The Great Manhunt) is directed by Gordon Douglas and written by Kenneth Garnet. It stars Randolph Scott, George Macready, Louise Albritton, John Ireland, Noah Beery Junior, Charles Kemper and Viginia Huston. Music is by George Duning and Paul Sawtell and cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr.

After the fall of the Dalton Gang, Bill Doolin (Scott) becomes head of his own gang of outlaws. But with the law in hot pursuit and his yearning to start a new life, Doolin knows he is greatly up against it.

Since it irritates many, it needs pointing out that if you are searching for a history lesson - a film full of real life fact - then look elsewhere. This is at best an interpretation of Bill Doolin the outlaw, where the makers get some things right and others not so. So just settle in for a Western movie, out to entertain with that bastion of Western, Randy Scott, up front and central.

Standard rules of 1940s/50s Westerns apply, meaning there is nothing new across the dusty plains here, outlaw wants to escape his past but circumstances refuse to let him do so. Cue moral and emotional conflict, chases, fisticuffs, shootings, robberies and macho posturing. The Doolin gang are here portrayed as lovable rogues, with main man Bill particularly exuding that fact, and it's here where the Production Code tempers the promise of something more biting in narrative thrust. The lady characters are unfortunately short changed in the writing, leaving the guys to carry the pic to safety conclusion.

At production level there is much to admire. Lawton's black and white photography is crisp and detailed, the interiors atmospherically photographed, the exteriors gorgeously showcasing the Calif locations to full effect. Stunt work (with legendary Yakima Canutt on point detail) is high grade, exciting and authenticity rolled into one. While the crowning glory comes with the stampede at pic's finale, exhilarating is not overstating it. Cast can't be faulted, the ever watchable Scott surrounding by genre pros who don't know how to soil a Western, and with Douglas in the director's chair you got a man who knows his way around an honest Oater.

No pulling up of trees here, and some familiarity does do it down for those in tight with the genre, but lots to like here. From the gunny opening salvo to the mighty stampede, and encompassing rueful closings, it's a treat regardless of historical lessons. 7/10

Bill Doolin was an outlaw operating in Oklahoma territory in the 1890s who was captured in 1896 by a devoted lawman named Bill Tilghman who had spent four years doggedly pursuing him. Doolin escaped from prison but was eventually shot down by a U.S. Marshal named Heck Thomas. In THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA (1949), Doolin is played as something of a "good" outlaw by Randolph Scott. He's tall, handsome, polite to civilians, and blessed with a remarkable degree of self-control. He even goes straight at one point and marries a pretty, loving farm girl (Virginia Huston) and starts up a working farm. But, unfortunately, he gets pulled back into the outlaw life. As directed by Gordon Douglas, the film offers several bursts of exciting, well-staged western action, including lots of chases on horseback and some amazing feats of horsemanship. Scott is doubled in the long shots, but he does his own furious riding in medium-shot. Most of the chase scenes appear to have been shot in the familiar rocky terrain around Lone Pine, California, at the foot of the Sierras, a dramatic landscape perfect for such scenes, even if it looks nothing like Oklahoma.

Western buffs will enjoy the way the film incorporates other historical western figures, including a couple who had later movies of their own. At the beginning we see the Dalton gang carry out the famed disastrous raid on Coffeyville, Kansas, a fiasco that only Doolin survives because his horse went lame at the last minute (which matches the account of the raid supplied in the book, "Bill Tilghman, Marshal of the Last Frontier," by Floyd Miller). The Dalton gang, of course, has been the subject of many westerns. Later in the film, after Doolin has recruited various gang members, they all adopt the habit of hiding out between jobs in the wide open town of Ingalls, where one of the gang, Bitter Creek (John Ireland), has a girlfriend. She is called Rose of Cimarron and is played in a mature, elegant fashion by Louise Allbritton (SON OF Dracula). One of the characters we meet in Ingalls is a spunky little two-fisted, sharp-shootin' teenage cowgirl named Cattle Annie who wants to join the gang and is well-played by Dona Drake (who was 35 at the time!). A later western, ROSE OF CIMARRON (1952), starred Mala Powers in the title role and I remember her as quite a fiery display of dark-eyed female outlawry. In 1980, there was a film called CATTLE ANNIE AND LITTLE BRITCHES, which starred Amanda Plummer as Cattle Annie, Burt Lancaster as Bill Doolin, and Rod Steiger as Bill Tilghman.

There's a U.S. Marshal in this film named Sam Hughes who pursues Doolin for nearly all of the film's 90 minutes. He appears to be based on Tilghman. Why the name change when Marshal Heck Thomas is left intact, I can't say. Hughes is played by George Macready and Thomas is played by Robert Barrat. Tilghman, one of the most daring of western lawmen, was played by name in only two films I know of, the aforementioned CATTLE ANNIE and the TV movie, YOU KNOW MY NAME (1999), which starred Sam Elliott. The book I mentioned, "Bill Tilghman, Marshal of the Last Frontier," by Floyd Miller (Doubleday, 1968), is highly recommended if you want to read a vivid account of a real western lawman's exciting career. As for this movie, I would urge you not to expect the most accurate portrayal of events, but to take it as a piece of solid, well-crafted western entertainment, with an above-average cast and an attention to details normally left out of studio westerns.