Bandit Queen

I would perfectly have imagined Barbara Stanwyck in this role, after her performances in THE FURIES, CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, MAVERICK QUEEN and FORTY GUNS, all feminists westerns before their times. This is a grabe B and I would say Z picture, directed by Bill Berke who was very prolific on this matter, especially in the forties and early fifties. Watch out for his filmography, you'll be impressed, and all are agreeable low budget flicks from which it is nearly forbidden to expect something exceptional. His best work will remain his last films, maybe he had more ambition by the end of his life.

Whip wielding, half-Mexican Barbara Britton returns home to find her parents cheated out of their estates and then killed before her eyes. She goes to town to report it to the authorities, but the sheriff is Barton Maclane. So in imitation of Joaquim Murietta she turns bandit under her Mexican name, while posing as Lola Belmont from Detroit, and fighting off the lovelorn advances of Willard Parker. Parker has bought the estates, seized by taxes, and is stripping a lot of gold out of them, but Miss Britton and her bandits seize the shipments and distribute them among the natives.

It's all rather dull, like a gender-swapped version of Zorro, in which everyone rides frantically around the same amazing bit of scenery among the Vasquez Rocks three times. Good intentions aside, the one good thing about this movie is it makes clear what I've been telling people for decades: a running man with a revolver is no match for a prone man with a rifle. Otherwise, even Thurston Hall is wasted in a brief bit.

When her parents are murdered before her very eyes, "Zara" (Barbara Britton) vows revenge but she has little wherewithal to carry out that threat! She decides to take a more subtle tack, though, and arriving in the town disguised as a travelling American she quickly finds an ally in the local "Murietta" (Phillip Reed) and together they assemble a group of vigilantes all of whom have an axe to grind with the perpetrators of numerous crimes visited upon the Spanish community whose assets are to be seized or stolen by the newly arrived and avaricious American townsfolk. Now we know all along who the baddies are, and after about fifteen minutes this just becomes an episode of "Zorro" only with a feisty female antagonist. The production is basic and the acting ridiculously static from start to finish, especially the terribly wooden Britton and her partner in crime Reed who go through the swashbuckling motions as if someone were calling 1-2-3, 1-2-3 from out of vision. The title offers excitement, the execution - well not so much.

Set in the days of old California, this piece of fantasy features Britton in the title role as the woman who, like batman, turns masked avenger when she witnesses the murder of her parents. In conjunction with Joaquin Murietta (Reed) she rids the territory of Parker and Maclane. Britton snaps her whip well, and looks extremely attractive, which is the main point in this otherwise routine-B-western.

i enjoyed the singing and action sequences as well as the bull whip thing. its a real oater but the photography is above average and there are some interesting plot devices and twists that are not seen in a lot of other westerns.