Blazing Across the Pecos

Power-hungry mayor Ace Brockway (Charles Wilson) is trying to drive trader Matt Carter (Thomas Jackson) out of business by having Indians attack his trading posts and supply wagons. Steve Blake (Charles Starrett), alias the masked Durango Kid, arrives in town, signing on as deputy to the inept marshal (Smiley Burnette), and making friends with the local newspaper editor (Paul Canpbell) and Carter's daughter (Patricia Barry). Blake works to foil Brockway's scheme, starting with his supplying of rifles to the Indians.

The Durango Kid pow-wows with the injuns, dives through windows and leaps on horse as he fights against the nasty mayor and his crony in this fast-packed and action-packed entry. It's a good entry where you see Smiley Burnette swipe a cloth with glasses on top! To enjoy the Durango Kid I think you have to be a kid at heart /a perpetual matinee kid!

If you had seen as many Durango Kid westerns as you said you did, you should have realized that these were designed for kids some sixty years ago. Barry Shipman who wrote several of the screenplays admitted that they were written to a formula and as such the plots did tend to become a bit stereotyped. Frankly, we didn't care. We were there for a afternoon of fun and excitement where we could scream and yell to our hearts content without too much adult supervision. Obviously if you had been in the audience as an adult, we would have thought it was a little strange. The reason that the print quality is so bad is that Columbia cranked these things out on a budget. They were not meant to last several decades and in fact, many have disintegrated through the years because of poor storage. What I can't understand is if you were bored by the film, why didn't you turn it off. That way, you could have spent the rest of your hour more constructively. Incidentally, Charles Starrett hails from Athol, Massachusetts, whose family owned a machine tool business.

I have seen several Durango Kid westerns over the past few months on the Western Channel and they are usually somewhat entertaining with good writing and with a few twists. If this had been the first one that I had ever seen I would have never bothered to see any others. The plot was like a child's western and it lead up to nothing. What did not help was the unusually poor print quality. I wish I could have that hour of my life back.