Colorado Sundown

Colorado Sundown finds Rex Allen accompanying his sidekick Slim Pickens to the reading of a will where Slim will inherit a third of a ranch along with fellow heirs Mary Louise Kay and June Vincent and Fred Graham. The last two were expecting the whole ranch and these other heirs two the two thirds they don't have throw a crimp into their plans.

Which are to denude a forest area which provides a natural flood barrier for the ranchers. These two want to open an old mill and to get permission to cut the trees have spread word of a plague of beetles in the area who would eat the trees until they rotted. They even get another idiot brother of their's to pose as a forest ranger giving them permission. They also kill the real forest ranger.

June Vincent played a lot of evil women in many a film. She's at her worst in Colorado Sundown.

Slim Pickens has some good moments himself, fighting a few losing battles with a goat that nails him every time he bends over. There's also a gag borrowed from the Road To Morocco where Pickens plays himself and his own mother. It worked well here as it did for Bob Hope.

This is a good Rex Allen feature and I'm convinced more than ever that Rex was doing a lot of material meant originally for Roy Rogers. He does it well though.

Rex Allen is the classic movie cowboy: stoic, tough, and principled, as he plays a ranch foreman with the same name. He comes along to help his friend Slim Pickens (with the cowboy-turned-actor also playing a character with the same name), who's one of those who have inherited a ranch. Unfortunately, two of the other heirs, Carrie and Dan (June Vincent and Fred Graham) are unscrupulous types who want to protect their timber interests at all costs. Rest assured that Rex will do whatever it takes to expose their plot and punish the guilty.

Directed capably by Western veteran William Witney, "Colorado Sundown" gets right to the point, packing a fair bit of entertainment value into its trim 67 minute run time. We get multiple donnybrooks, chase sequences, and action scenes, as well as the atmospheric sight of characters working hard to prevent a flood. (A large part of the plot has to do with ranchers resenting the timber barons for cutting down all the trees and leaving the land vulnerable.) We also get a couple of songs, and an appreciable healthy amount of humour. (One major running joke has people getting head-butted in the posterior by an ornery goat.) There's also a comedy relief maid named Mattie (Louise Beavers), and an endearing pooch named Manhattan. While this little movie does get serious at times, it never gets too unpleasant.

The cast is thoroughly engaging, with Slim at his upbeat best. (He also plays a secondary role in drag, leading to the biggest guffaw in the entire picture, right near the end.). Mary Ellen Kay is a pretty leading lady as fellow heir Jackie Reynolds. Vincent and Graham are appropriately odious villains, especially him; John Daheim adds to the villainy as their unsavoury relative.

Overall, this is a decent enough way to kill some time if one is a real Western aficionado.

Six out of 10.

After receiving a letter stating that he has inherited a ranch in Colorado a cowboy named "Joshua 'Slim' Pickens" (Slim Pickens) rides up from Texas with his good friend "Rex Allen" (Rex Allen) to claim it. When he gets there, however, he discovers that he has only been bequeathed one-third of the ranch and that two other people have also received an equal share. The first is an attractive young woman by the name of "Jackie Reynolds" (Mary Ellen Kay) who has a nice personality and is easy to get along with. The second person "Carrie Hurley" (June Vincent) is an extremely conniving woman who will do anything necessary to gain possession of the other two portions of the estate to further her financial interests-and she has two brothers who are equally vicious. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a solid, old-fashioned Western which featured singing cowboys and a little humor along the way as well. Admittedly, it was clearly a product of its time and viewers may not understand or appreciate a grade-B film of this sort. Be that as it may, I liked it for the most part and for that reason have rated it accordingly. Average.

Siblings Carrie and Daniel Hurley are trying to start up their timber mill by trying to have all the trees in the valley chopped despite the fact the forest rangers saying it will hurt the ranchers by exposing the land to erosion and flash floods. They also inherit a ranch with timber that can be cut down, but find themselves coheirs with Jacqueline Reynolds, arriving from the east, and Slim Pickens, coming from Texas with his ranch foreman Rex Allen. The Hurleys try to buy out Jacqueline and Slim's portions of the ranch claiming that the trees are infected with a blight and must be cut down, which will ruin the property, but Rex and Mattie, Jacqueline's maid, go stop them from signing the document. The Hurley's next plan is to have their younger brother, Dusty (a black sheep even for this family) impersonate a forestry official (using the documents of an official poisoned by the Hurleys) to order the trees cut down. Rex writes the forestry department for advice on the matter, and his letter is stolen by Dusty, who takes it back to Carrie, who poisons him to prevent him from telling Rex of their scheme. The Hurleys accuse Rex of Dusty's murder, but he is called to prevent rains from flooding the valley. Excellent entry in the Rex Allen series with plenty of action and great direction from director Witney. The script could have used some work in the beginning since the Hurley's motives at the beginning (before they inherit the ranch) aren't clearly explained. The film has a bunch of great fights including Rex vs. Graham (Daniel Hurley) started by Rex throwing a punch while riding past him on Koko. Pickens and Beavers (Mattie) both give good comic relief performances here. An all around winner. Rating, based on B westerns, 10.

Every time I watch this film I enjoy it! No rustlers! No land grabbers or bank robbers. Instead we saw Interesting an Bad Guy & Gal. Loved Mary Ellen Kay as always and Louise Beavers gave a fine bitter sweet performance. Her scenes with the pooch were funny and touching. But it's always fun to watch a truly great guy, Rex Allen, think his way through the clues and clobber the villains. Koko is just gorgeous enough to be the icing on the cake of this very watchable film. . more than once.