The Man from Texas

James Craig loves wife Lynn Bar and his kids (who are never seen), but his work annoys her: he leads a criminal gang as the Pecos Kid. He keeps trying to go straight, but circumstances and his temper keep getting in the way.

One of a half dozen or so movies with the exact same title, this movie was Eagle-Lion's attempt to rise above its PRC grade-Z western roots, since Lash Larue wasn't going to do it. It has a fine cast of supporting players, including Una Merkel, Wallace Ford and Harry Davenport, but producer Bryan Foy had spent too many years running Warner's B division to waste any money, so most of the movie is shot in the cheapest way possible, including a lot of newspaper headlines to advance the story. The result is certainly watchable, but the humor is too heavy-handed to sparkle.

Based a little bit on the character of Jesse James, James Craig stars as the notorious El Paso Kid who's made a nice living as an all around outlaw. But he's getting older and the places he can operate in the great state of Texas are getting fewer. Not to mention Lynn Bari his wife wants him to just get out of the outlaw business. She wants a church wedding because she doesn't feel rightly married with a justice of the peace even with two children already.

But he keeps getting dragged back in. Not that Craig hasn't some good impulses as he helps widow Una Merkel save her ranch from being repossessed by skinflint banker Harry Davenport.

It was interesting to see Davenport who usually plays kindly old gentlemen and is almost never a villain type in a role that Donald Meek or Berton Churchill would normally play. Of course both were gone when Man From Texas was released by Eagle-Lion.

Singer Johnny Johnston is in this as well as a singing sidekick to Craig.

In the end Craig completely redeems himself.

Man From Texas is a mediocre western that only if you are fan of someone in the cast you should bother with.

This film essentially revolves around a man named "Tobias Simms" (James Craig) who is also believed by some of the local residents to be the notorious bandit known as the El Paso Kid. And with each daring robbery his reputation gets even more tarnished. So much so that his wife "Zee Simms" (Lynn Bari) has become ashamed to show her face to many of her neighbors. To that effect, when she threatens to leave, he subsequently promises her that he will go straight. However, he soon finds that this is much more difficult than he realizes and that his past actions still have consequences that he must eventually face. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I wasn't generally expecting much from this film as I figured it was just another grade-B Western produced during a time when they were all too common. However, having now seen it, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised by it overall. Admittedly, the fact that it was filmed in black-and-white and the picture quality wasn't that particularly good, certainly didn't help matters. Even so, I thought that both James Craig and the beautiful Lynn Bari performed quite well in their respective roles and for that reason I have rated this film accordingly. Slightly above average.

A comedy specialist as a director - Leigh Jason, who finished his career a couple of years later by a war movie: OKINAWA. We hardly feel the comedy director whilst watching this movie, it may even look like a Ray Enright, a western specialist from this very period, late forties. Good and solid script. Unfortunately the finale is really cheesy, and then we can admit that something went wrong in the story. So shame, because I began to think about something far better. However, considering Leigh Jason made it, it remains a good surprise. Western specialists have done far worse over the years. Try to watch it anyway.