The Marksman

By 1953, the era of the classic B-western was coming to a close, replaced by television and other film genres. This Western starring the under-appreciated Wayne Morris was enjoyable but failed to break any new ground. Morris portrays a sharpshooting Deputy Marshal brought in to bust up a criminal racket on the plains.

Although the script and budget were less than adequate here, Morris brought a likable toughness to this interesting role. Cowboy veteran I. Stanford Jolley was good in this one as the much put-upon Marshal. The pacing was a little slow for my tastes.......

Worth watching, if only for the fine performance by Wayne Morris.

Mike Martin becomes a deputy United States marshal in early-day Texas because of his almost unbelievable marksmanship. (That he has a rifle with a special scope doesn't hurt anything.) He hates the thought that he has been hired as a killer instead of a lawman but his superior, Marshal Bob Scott, sets him straight. For years a master gang of rustlers has raided government grazing lands and Lieutenant-Governor Watson orders Scott to get them. Scott, disguised as a prospector, is killed when he spots the outlaws deep in the Sangre de Christo range. Head of the rustlers is rancher Champ Wylie and his gang includes his foreman Santee and a crack gunman, Kincaid. Visiting Wylie is his novelist niece Jane Warren. When Scott is not heard from, Mike, also posing as a prospector, goes to find him, and meets Jane. He eventually solves the rustling mystery but not without some lead exchange...

There's a fair amount of body count due to Wayne Morris' keen marksmanship in this western called, eh, the Marksman and, as far as being an efficiently and agreeable programmer that passes time decently, it hits the mark. I found it quite entertaining; an interesting idea of a deputy stopping bad guys with a rifle - even if the rifle is too early for the timeline here - and a brisk and adequate plot being strong factors. Plus Elena Verdugo is a cutie and I liked her inquisitive and innocent character. She plays a writer from the East visiting her uncle, Frank Ferguson, who happens to be the head of a cattle rustling outfit. For undemanding western fanatics this would do just fine.

The once-promising career of Wayne Morris had long-since deteriorated into a string of low-budget programmers by the time he made this effort for the Poverty Row studio Westwood Productions. He plays the title character, a deputy Marshal who's getting a little fed up with only ever being called upon to shoot bad guys from a distance. When his boss goes missing while on the hunt for rustlers, Morris sees it as a perfect opportunity to show how useful he can be as an undercover lawman, but finds the job to be tougher than he expected.

Morris gives a dependable enough performance, although it's not difficult to see why his star faded so early in his career, and pint-sized Elena Verdugo is cute as his love interest, but no movie in which most of the supporting cast each made literally hundreds of movies in their career is going to be anything more than filler. Good to see I Stanford Jolley playing a good guy for a change, though.

This movie is replete with all the tawdry western cliches both verbal and visual but there is a nice spicing of 50s schlock in here like the odd shot that gets telephone poles in it or planes...or te odd extras with a timex watch...but the most glaring gaffe of all is the hero sporting a slick telescopic sighted Remington high power bolt action hunting rifle (a gun which was not made until 1949) in the setting of the old 1880s west...campy in a new way. If ou like cult flicks filled with continuity errors and chronological anomalies this one will keep you entertained

With a leading actor who looked so old and lumpy but constantly been called "Son", "Young Man" in this loosely scripted Western. This movie was dated and released in 1953 and Wayne Morris, who played the marksman, was only about 39 years old, but his facial look was so droopy like a person over 50 or 60, the muscle under his chin already loose and droopy that only old guys would have; exactly like Gary Cooper's old chin and neck, yet still played in lot of movies like young stud, co-starred by many actresses half of his age. Wayne Morris' physical condition was worse than what Gary Cooper's, since Cooper was slim and tall in good proportion, unlike Morris' unbalanced upper body, so heavy and ballooned like a retired rancher, but his lower body below his waist was just the opposite, long and slim but not as strong and stable as a guy under 40 should have to be look like. His facial features also not quite good enough to be called as a "Young Man" or "Son", just old enough already to be treated as an late middle aged guy. His look was the weakest part in this movie that not easy for me to accept his role as it should be.

The screenplay was such a one-way predictable no-brainer. And the music, the ever playing non-stop score whenever those guys on horses, so loud and so annoying and so disturbing. The romance in this movie was another joke, so shallow and so haste, not enough to fully develop into a believable one either.

Wayne Morris was a terrible cast through and through.