Belle Starr's Daughter

Belle Starr's Daughter shows the team trying to ease out of the then doomed cowboy B movie market - three sort of stars, reasonable production values and a plot with some attempt at resonance and shading of the characters.

Cameron proved surprisingly effective as the bad guy. He did a similar turn in a Hitchcock TV episode and the two can be considered his best work. Wally Ford is always good value and the rest get by, with Montgomery suitable as a straight arrow law man and Roman young and appealing. Isabel Jewel is a surprise, after all her dewy innocent parts of the thirties and the piece is strong on welcome character faces - Kemper, Lambert, McDonald and the rest.

The action staging is excellent and the setting adequate, even though most of the scenes are shadowless over lit. Nice touches like the menacing night "This street was full of horses" or the final "I'm hit too." Lesley Seylander proved one of the few of the B movie directors able to deliver more ambitious work.

Apart from Rod Cameron starring as a villain (he almost always played heroes), there isn't a lot to make this a must-see western. It's based on bad history like so many other B-westerns.

Belle Starr was a real life villain, though her exploits were greatly exaggerated to sell pulp magazines in the old days. She also was murdered when she was 41. In this film, she's killed as well...but in a way VERY different from real life. But as I said these old westerns often get the facts wrong. In the case of the film, she's murdered by one of her own gang members, 'Bitter Creek' Yauntis. But he lies...telling Starr's daughter that the Deputy Marshall (George Montgomery) shot her...though if he did, it was because she was an outlaw! Despite this, Cimarron (Belle's daughter, played by Ruth Roman) joins Bitter Creek and his gang...and sees them commit all sorts of atrocities...yet she believes he's a nice guy. Apparently, Cimarron is rather dim and it takes her a while to see the light. As for the Deputy Marshall, he's a stereotypical good guy out to clean up the west and avenge a few wrongs.

Overall, a pretty average western with little to make he recommend it, though little (apart from rewriting history) to hate either.

If you do watch, pay attention during the bar fight. The stuntmen are VERY obvious during this scene.

If George Montgomery has his way they'll be a person in the law enforcement community marrying into Belle Starr's family. Along during the action in Belle Starr's Daughter he takes a fancy to Ruth Roman. But Roman can't see him because she holds him responsible for the death of her mother played briefly by Isabell Jewell.

There's a truce between the law and the outlaw. The former marshal of Antioch says if the outlaws stay clear of Antioch he'll not pursue them into their sanctuary. But one night one of those outlaws Rod Cameron murders the marshal. He then murders Jewell and her confidante Kenneth MacDonald. And then he tells Roman that it was Montgomery's posse that did the dirty deed. So Montgomery will certainly have a lot to overcome.

Some good performances by players used to being home on the range compensate for a story that has quite a few holes in it. Of course this has nothing to do with the real Belle Starr any more than 20th Century Fox's big budget oater that starred Gene Tierney and Randolph Scott had to do with her.

But imagine the outlaw queen having a law enforcement official as a son-in-law?

The most peculiarity of this western is to have Rod Cameron as the villain, the only one I guess of his whole career. I admit he was young at this time, the late forties, but it remains an interesting role for his fans. He will shine later in Republic Pictures, westerns most of them and some crime films. The rest of this solid B movie is totally foreseeable, classic, bringing no surprise at all. Lesley Selander was a prolific chain film maker, especially for westerns and this one remains among his best, not the most memorable though, but worth catching if you can. Rod Cameron as a villain, he who was for me some kind of poor man's Randolph Scott.