The Last Musketeer

In the early fifties, the once omnipotent form of the B western was drawing to an end, largely because TV could supply such stuff on a daily basis - for free. If you wanted to see an A western, in color and with scope screen starring 'the big boys' (Wayne, Stewart, Fonda, etc.), you had to pay - and people did, going to the theatres in droves for films like Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (Lancaster and Douglas in that one). But fewer and fewer were willing to shell out money to catch a little black and white item, which is why those few remaining B western stars, like Audie Murphy, began to appear in full color B+ pictures. All of this is a prelude to The Last Musketeer (nothing to do with Dumas, believe me), a mild, brief (67 mins.), mostly ordinary oater except for some big action scenes at the end, involving wagons full of water trying to pass through oil-fired flames on the prairie. They've been started by villain James Anderson, who may have had the meanest looking face in B western films. He wants to starve out the other ranchers by drying up their water supplies, only Slim (Slim Pickens) falls through a hole in the earth and discovers an underwater lake. With the help of cattle buyer Rex Allen (one of the last of the singing cowboys, with a fine Arizona accented voice, and the last B cowboy star to use his own name in the guise of a fictional character, like Autry and Rogers), Slim saves the day. The film has at best ordinary scripting and below average acting (even the ordinarily reliable Pickens is a bit over the top, particularly when he tries to sing), first rate music by Allen and a nice ensemble of the Sons of the Pioneers type, a charming low key quality by Allen, and spectacularly staged action - always what the audience for a B western wanted in the first place. Also, an enigmatic, offbeat beauty named Mary Ellen Kaye as a hardriding cowgirl. Minor league fun, to be sure, and only for B western completists. But if you are one, this isn't a half bad way to kill a little more than an hour. Watching it, though, you become very much aware of why even the kids stopped attending such stuff and stayed home to watch The Lone Ranger, Range Rider, and Buffalo Bill, Jr.

Though what musketeers of any kind have to do with this story I don't know, Rex Allen stars in this fine B western where cattle buyer Allen gets involved with the problems of a valley and the small ranchers who are being starved out by James Anderson owner of the local Ponderosa who also controls all the water in the valley with a reservoir he's built and maintains with gunmen.

His father built the Ponderosa, but the son wants to make it bigger yet by driving all the other ranchers out and then damming up an underground river that feeds the reservoir and selling electric power to surrounding cities. In 1952 still a lot of the country had not yet gotten public power courtesy of one of the New Deal's most innovative and progressive agencies, the Rural Electrification Agency. The plot would have resonated well in the rural market area though not as well as in the Thirties. In that sense though good and still somewhat topical this would have found a bigger market in the Thirties.

Rex and sidekick Slim Pickens also have to contend with young lovers Mary Ellen Kay and Michael Hall whose father is killed by Anderson and his men and is seeking vengeance. Hall's understandable grief and quest for Anderson's hide might upset plans that Allen has to bring Anderson down legally.

Both Rex Allen and Slim Pickens have a background in rodeo, in fact Slim Pickens was a rodeo clown. About six or seven minutes in the film is devoted to Slim's routine with a bull like you would have seen in his younger days.

This is a pretty serious western and a good one showing Rex Allen to good advantage as a cowboy hero.