Song of the Saddle

Song Of The Saddle is a nice adaption of The Count Of Monte Cristo set in the old Hollywood west. I wonder how many viewers in 1936 caught on that this was inspired by the classic Dumas revenge tale.

Addison Richards and son George Earnest are pioneers heading west when they meet up with Charles Middleton and henchmen. Middleton who was the ultimate screen villain as Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon is as pitiless here as he is in that serial. He sells Richards supplies and then kills him for them back and whatever else he can rob. But the boy survives takes names and numbers.

When he grows up to be Dick Foran he comes back and he's not just going to kill these guys. No Foran has a rather intricate scheme of revenge going for him and he executes it with patience and care.

Foran sings a couple of nice, but forgettable western ballads. The action here is on the plot, done with far more care than normally given B pictures of any kind. You really have to see this one to appreciate how he accomplishes his mission.

Like another pulp hero, Foran loves it when a plan comes together.

In 1931, at Columbia, Buck Jones sang a song before becoming "The Avenger," outfoxing the villian and his two henchmen and orchestrating thier doom, one by one. The backstory is quite different here, as Jones played an adult Mexican who witnesses his brother's brutal murder and Dick Foran is a singing cowboy who witnessed his pioneer father's murder as a child. Before this, Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, Johnny Mack Brown and others had also used this kind of childhood preface. The audience has a strong emotional stake in the hero's quest for vengence and at the same time can't condone his out-right murder of the villians. Buck Jones as a Mexican couldn't get justice in white man's California, and our singing cowboy can't because "It happened too long ago" and he has no proof. Like Buck, though, he writes the three villians names on a wall, to be checked off. As in The Avenger, their fates are are almost identical. So this Warners' B+ western qualifies as an unofficial remake, getting no points for originality. But in the B's especially, "it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it," and Song of the Saddle does it very well. I loved best Charles Middleton, dark-souled and merciless as ever. Too frail for fights and lassoing, but larger than life in the scarey man dept.