Wild West

Wild West finds B movie cowboys Eddie Dean and Lash LaRue teaming up as Texas Rangers to find out who's been sabotaging the construction of the railroad and the telegraph. Roscoe Ates is along as a sidekick to both as the film takes on a Three Mesquiteer look.

It gets real personal for the guys when a friend is killed trying to stop these outlaws. As if the villainy isn't bad enough this bunch is also stirring up the Indians as well.

Behind it all is Warner Richmond as self appointed Roy Bean like judge who likes the wide open town he's got with all the payoffs from the various outlaws who frequent his town. Believe me this judge makes Bean look like a doctor of jurisprudence.

With a song of two from Eddie Dean and Lash LaRue doing a few tricks with the bullwhip all kinds of devotees of the B western should like this one. I will say the version I saw was cut by a bout a quarter so you'll have to fill in the blanks.

The Army won't protect the guys stringing up telegraph lines because that's Indian territory by treaty. Announcing that any treaty that favors Indians is no good, they call in Eddie Dean. Dean and Marshall Lash Larue discover a crooked town that's killing the Buffalo to starve the Indians, so Dean and Larue promise to investigate, which is fine by then.

The version I looked at was the shortened 1948 reissue, which may go a way towards explaining why Eddie gets one song in the middle, and the. chorus as everyone rides off at the end. Otherwise it's a fairly standard B western, with some poorly executed fight choreography towards the end, with comic relief Roscoe Ates using dynamite to blow his own clothes off, leaving him in long Johns and blackface. Yet notice, if you will, that the Indians, who don't do much of anything, are not portrayed as bloodthirsty savages. While there are plenty of westerns in the era which do so, it was not an invariable trope before BROKEN ARROW supposedly broke the mold. The racism towards Indians is not an assumption of the film makers here, but part of the story.

And yes, Lash does use his whip during the big fight at the end.

Ceteris paribus, what'cha see is what'cha get. My "10" rating is relative, believe me! "B" Western fans watch these movies for a whole 'nother reason, so no sense in giving a Kael revue to this thing. This movie is almost a PRC "Gone With the Wind" if you consider the production values compared to most PRC efforts filled with ghost towns or towns with 4 citizens and a budget of 60 bullets. At times you can easily tell the stock footage from PRC efforts. Haven't seen, to my knowledge, the other segments of this PRC trilogy but the main thing that caught my attention is how Eddie (or someone) allows Lash to dominate many of the scenes in which they both appear, whereas in most of the Eddie efforts he is pictured as Superman on a horse. Eddie is off warbling to the trees while Lash is takin' care of bid'nes. If you're a "B" fan, you'll like this'un.