Gunsmoke Ranch

Ray Corrigan, Robert Livingston, and Max Terhune try to prevent a crooked real estate tycoon from swindling a group of displaced flood victims by selling them worthless farm land for twenty-five times the original price as part of a bigger scheme.

Another light-weight, but watchable entry in Republic Pictures' Three Mesquiteers series, this one has the usual good photography, humor, and decent action scenes, including a good climax. Particularly enjoyable is the excellent rocky desert scenery.

It's not the best or most memorable Mesquiteers adventure. However, it's fun while it lasts, with scene-stealing Terhune and his dummy getting the best moments this time around.

Pretty funny-bad Western here, which feature that all-time famous (sarcasm) trio, The Three Mesquiteers, as they help people who have just escaped a flood (which caused DESOLATION, PESTILATION and FAMINE, (so say the cue cards). They are offered ranch land in Arizona by a unscrupulous shyster, and it's up to the three to make sure Justice Is Served! So in less in an hour, we have laughably bad fights, a joke of a song, scary stunt handling, a guy doing a non-stop comedy routine with a dummy, and rather offensive jibes at stuttering people. All this, and this rather curious confusion with the 1930's wardrobe mixed in with western drag. Highly strange, but not really worth your time.

This 'Three Mesquiteers' feature is a fair B-Western, rather routine, and with quite a low-budget look to it, but watchable. It has generally likable, if ordinary, characters, and the story holds some interest. It has some lighter moments and just enough action to keep it moving along.

The story has the 'Mesquiteers' running across a new town that is being built to help out some settlers who have been displaced by a flood. The trio start to suspect that something might not be what it seems, so they stick around to look into things, and the action proceeds from there, with some occasional humor (much of it from Max Terhune). Some of it works, and some of it doesn't really come off. Overall, there's not too much that's either especially good or especially bad about this one.

After a devastating flood wipes out the farms and homes of a large area in the Midwest, a man by the name of "Phineas T. Flagg" (Kenneth Harlan) appears and offers to sell them prime land in Arizona for an extremely cheap rate. Not realizing how deceptive this man has been in the past, the local people take him up on his offer and sell everything they have to purchase the deeds to these lands from him. Sure enough, once they finally arrive in Arizona, they learn that the land they just purchased is about to be flooded due to the construction of a dam and that the contract they signed leaves them no option to negotiate with the federal government about it. Fortunately, there just happens to be three cowboys named "Tucson Smith" (Ray Corrigan), "Stony Brooke" (Robert Livingston) and "Lullaby Joslin" (Max Terhune) in that part of Arizona who are wise to Phineas T. Flagg and know how to deal with conmen like him. But the question soon becomes whether these "Three Mesquiteers" will be able to help these settlers before the federal government floods the area and leaves them homeless again. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I was somewhat disappointed with this film for a couple of reasons. For starters, I don't particularly care that much for the comedic antics of Lullaby Joslin and this film featured him way too much. Yet as bad as his comedy routine was, the director (Joseph Kane) then threw in another character named "Elmer Twiddlebaum" (Lou Fulton) who was even worse. Fortunately, things improved during the second half of the film which almost salvaged the movie overall. But on the whole, it just wasn't enough, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Watching this movie at classiccinemaonline.com is probably not the best way to see it, but it beats the heck out of not seeing it.

My connection (DSL) created some jumpiness, but there was still a lot of quality visible, from a story by the great Oliver Drake, to directing by the equally great Joseph Kane.

Of course the Three Mesquiteers, the almost original threesome (Terhune, Corrigan, Livingston), are nearly always watchable, so the ingredients are there for a very good movie.

To be honest, I rated it higher than I felt what I saw deserved, with my jumpy connection and the abysmal attempts at "comedy," but, still, it's the Mesquiteers and Drake and Kane, and some great stunt work (the unsurpassed Yakima Canutt) and great camera angles, and what was apparently great stock footage in spots, and an exciting score by the great Raoul Kraushaar.

With all that, it is definitely a must-see for western fans, for Republic fans, and for Mesquiteers fans. And for Kraushaar fans, including me.