Return of the Bad Men

Figured this film was going to be your typical Western film and very soon I found out this was a great 1948 Classic Western with Randolph Scott, (Marshall Vance Cordell) who is about to retire and marry a woman he loves who also has a child from a previous marriage. However, their plans had to be canceled because their town of Paxton Oklahoma was invaded by a gang of famous outlaws called the Dalton Gang, Sundance Kid, Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Doolin. There was also a young gal named Cheyenne, (Anne Jeffreys) who was a female outlaw with this gang and added a different interest to this Western Story. Marshall Cordell became involved with Cheyenne and she falls in love with him and also the gal he intends to marry which adds some romance to this shoot E'M kill E'm Film

This movie surprised me. I don't care for Randolph Scott, and reading the description of the movie to include Billie the Kid, Youngers, Sundance Kid, and the Daltons, etc. This seemed like a joke. Clearly a bad movie to waste time on, but I couldn't resist watching it start to see all these headliner bad guys in one gang. I expected to rate the movie no higher than 3.....if I even made it past the first 30 minutes.

Turns out, the movie caught me off guard. In the context of a B Western, it actually works. Seeing Gabby in a 'non-side-kick' role wasn't the disappointment I expected. Seeing them "throw" bullets out of the guns (the classic snap the gun down and fire in one motion), and taking about 2 seconds from pistol blast till the bullet strikes the rock in front of the bad guy, was ok, cause that's classic B Western stuff, and after all this was B Western in the 1940's.

If you're looking for a good old B Western that doesn't have the Duke in it, try this out. I gave it a 7 in spite of myself.

Return of the Badmen is directed by Ray Enright and co-written by Charles O'Neal, Jack Natteford and Luci Ward. It stars Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan, Anne Jeffreys, George Hayes and Jacqueline White. Music is by Paul Sawtell and cinematography by J. Roy Hunt.

Braxton, Oklahoma Territory, 1889, soon to be a ghost town as the impending land rush changes the West. With that comes more than just settlers, it brings outlaws too, some of the meanest there is. Under the leadership of Wild Bill Doolin has gathered the Sundance Kid, the Younger Brothers, the Daltons, Wild Bill Yeager, Billy The Kid, George Mason, the Arkansas Kid and Doolin's niece Cheyenne. Standing in their way? Vance Cordell, retired Texas Ranger, soon to become temporary marshal of newly formed Guthrie Town, and a man with a score to settle with the Sundance Kid.

Premise is simple, RKO, flush with the success of Badman's Territory the previous year, decide that more is best in this second instalment of the studio's "Badmen" trilogy (Best of the Badmen followed in 1951). They pitch some of the Wild West's baddest apples together and play them off against that bastion of stoic cowboyness, Randolph Scott. As a basic Western movie it works, film is always engaging, has a good action quota, is technically safe from the camera side of things and is driven by a pot boiling destiny showdown between Scott and Ryan. Trouble is is that so many notorious characters in one mix means the film has no chance of living up to its promise. Which in a running time of 90 minutes was always going to be impossible to achieve anyway, especially when you also have the inevitable romantic angle involving our hero, another character thread involving reform and the backdrop of the land rush as well.

Thankfully the film finds Scott and Ryan more than capable of sealing the deal, lifting the picture above the routine plotting and unrealistic nature of the set-up. It's good versus evil, where Scott's Cordell is the man in light, the man of the people, and Ryan's Sundance is the man in dark, a twitchy cold blooded psycho. Yes, there's the inevitability factor of it all, we know who is going to triumph here, but the build up is well handled and it does provide a very brisk and punch laden finale. There's nothing irritable in cast performances across the board, yes we want more from the roll call of actors playing under written villains, but story, as fantastical as it is, never sags and entertains from first minute to last. There's worse ways for Western fans to spend an hour and half, that's for sure! 6.5/10

The reviewer "krorie" from Van Buren, Arkansas, goes to great length to point out how historically Return of the Badmen were, listing the dates the different real life outlaws, depicted in the film, were living and when they died. While your research is to be commended, you missed the whole point of the movie. It was made for entertainment not enlightenment. Most of the westerns made by Hollywood took liberties with the facts and were presented in a fashion that audiences could accept. The Return of the Badmen, like its predecessor "Badmen Territory" used the combined villainy of real life western outlaws to add appeal to the western. While both films were made in the late Forties, and television had not yet made an effect on the movie going public, the genre was slowly being burned out. Everything possible had been tried in order to boost box office appeal. Actually, the B western was already suffering from postwar production costs, and ticket prices in those years right before television. Many families, particularly those with small children, did not have the money for a babysitter and so spent the evenings at home listening to radio. The movie westerns did their best box office at the Saturday afternoon matinées when parents dropped off their children at the theater so they could go shopping. While Randolph Scott made many westerns, these two westerns, particularly Return of the Badmen, must have made an impression on producer Mel Brooks because he uses Randolph Scott's name as an in-joke in his 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles. The townspeople are reluctant to help their new sheriff, who happens to be black, combat the outlaw hoards which is coming to their town. One person speaks up in defense of the sheriff by saying "You would help Randolph Scott" whereupon the people reverently repeat Scott's name as they take off their hats and are bathed in a heavenly light which shines from above.

In good historical fiction as in good sci-fi what is revealed must be possible, even if not likely. Though a superior B shoot-'em-up, "Return of the Badmen" plays havoc with the history of the Old West, not only in location but also in time period. Billy the Kid was never in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). It is highly unlikely that the Sundance Kid was ever in Indian Territory. The Bill Doolin Gang with the Arkansas Kid are depicted fairly accurately as far as place is concerned. Doolin called his band of cutthroats "The Wild Bunch" so maybe the writers confused Doolin's gang with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. It is also true that the Dalton Gang rode with the Doolin Gang in Indian Territory (Bill Doolin began his outlaw career with the Dalton Gang). The Younger Brothers with Frank and Jesse James hid out in Indian Territory but did not venture as far west as Guthrie. Cole Younger allegedly had a child (Pearl Starr) with Belle Starr in the area of today's eastern Oklahoma around Eufaula.

The time line is also out of sync. Billy the Kid was killed in 1881, Jesse in 1882. When Frank turned state's evidence, the Youngers left alive went to prison. The Coffeyville, Kansas, blunder was in 1892. The 1890's was the time of the Doolin Gang's peak activity, joined by remnants of the Dalton Gang. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were active at the turn of the century. As the later classic western, "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" shows, Cassidy's version of the Wild Bunch was the last notorious outlaw band of the Old West.

The Oklahoma Land Rush that led to the founding of Guthrie, Oklahoma, took place in 1889, several years after Billy the Kid's death. The part of the film showing Guthrie growing overnight to 10,000 inhabitants is historically accurate. The lawman who takes Cheyenne (Anne Jeffreys) into custody to deliver her to the federal court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, had a long journey before him. It is today an almost three-hour drive by car from Guthrie, Oklahoma, to Fort Smith, Arkansas.

I have read that because horror film producers were successfully grouping monsters together in one film, producers of westerns thought audiences would turn out to see oaters that grouped badmen together in one flick. If "Return of the Badmen" overdid it a bit, the concoction does make for an entertaining picture. At the crux of the story is the conflict between Marshal Vance Cordell (Randolph Scott) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Ryan). These two skilled actors make the whole hodgepodge work. The Sundance Kid is portrayed as a hothead who is more interested in killing the Marshal than in robbing banks. Ryan's concept of the Sundance Kid is quite different from Robert Redford's later incarnation of the badman. Redford's Kid is jovial, fun-loving, yet deadly when provoked. Ryan's Kid is dead serious, at heart a cold-blooded killer. As to be expected at the center of the rivalry is a woman, Cheyenne, a reformed outlaw, niece to Bill Doolin. To complicate the situation, the Marshal is already betrothed to the banker's daughter, Madge Allen (Jacqueline White), not the sweet, innocent young thing one might expect, but certainly with higher morals than the resourceful Cheyenne.

George "Gabby" Hayes, still a bewhiskered windbag, expands his sidekick characterization to include being a respected banker. This time around, rather than being the brunt of many a joke, Gabby is a good-hearted leading citizen standing up for law and order. He becomes a help to the Marshal, not a hindrance.

Director Ray Enright keeps the film moving with plenty of action, including a final shootout involving a burning cart of hay. "Return of the Badmen" is exciting and should please fans of B westerns of the 1940's.