Taggart

Tony Young stars in the title role of TAGGART (1964), a rancher's son who embarks on a mission of revenge after his parents are killed by the son of a town boss. After tracking down the culprit and killing him in front of his father, he is pursued for much of the film by a professional killer, Jay Jason (Dan Duryea), hired by the dying town boss and provided with a dubious warrant. The two men wind up in an abandoned Spanish mission occupied by Adam Stark (Dick Foran), an older man with a young Mexican wife, Consuelo (Elsa Cardenas), and a daughter from a previous marriage, Miriam (Jean Hale). The whole middle section of the film is essentially a five-character drama. The Stark family has a secret, one which compels hot-to-trot Consuelo to come on heavy, first to Taggart and then, after Taggart rebuffs her advances, to Jason, in the hopes that one of them will help her leave the mission with a cache of hidden wealth. An attack by rampaging Apaches complicates things. They all flee, but not all together, headed to a nearby fort for an action-packed finale.

The editors use lots of footage from other Universal color westerns, including one with a cattle drive and one with Indian attacks on a wagon train and a cavalry fort. Even the long shots, with the main characters riding against panoramic backdrops, seem to be taken from other movies, requiring the costumes in the new footage to match the previous footage. I wish I knew which westerns the footage came from. I've probably seen them, but I'd love to see them again. Also, the Spanish mission in which the Starks reside looks more like a hacienda to me. It's a bit of a stretch for the characters to call it a mission. Still, it's an enjoyable western which moves well and is enacted by a cast of players who know how to make this kind of thing work, all supervised by a director who's an old hand at this.

Dan Duryea plays his character as quite talkative and gregarious, rather unusual for such a greedy and cold-blooded character. He doesn't display much charm, so he never exactly fools anyone. It's a rather odd performance by the veteran heavy, but it keeps the confrontations between him and the more stoic Taggart quite lively. Both Duryea and Dick Foran had been under contract to Universal Pictures back in the 1940s. They'd previously co-starred in AL JENNINGS OF OKLAHOMA (1951), where they played brothers. David Carradine makes his debut here in a silent role as an ill-fated gunslinger. Elsa Cardenas is sexy and attractive in the femme fatale role. She only did a handful of films and TV episodes in Hollywood in the 1950s and '60s, but instead spent most of her long career in her native Mexico, starring in movies and TV novelas (soap operas) and evidently attaining a level of stardom she couldn't have gotten in Hollywood. (She's apparently still active in Mexican television.) Even so, I wish she'd spent more time in Hollywood. I would love to have seen her in more westerns.

Tony Young never managed to achieve much in the way of stardom and spent most of his career in TV guest spots and supporting roles in occasional feature films. He's quite good here, boasting a deep, soothing voice which could easily charm the ladies, a tall frame that suited him well for westerns, and a straightforward, confident manner. With his dark good looks and heavy-lidded eyes, he could have made a splash in Italian westerns like so many of his peers were doing in the 1960s and probably could have had a much bigger career as a result.

Kent Taggart's family, with their cattle stampeded, are killed by those who started it. In a fair gunfight, he kills the man's son responsible for it all and is on the run. Before the rancher dies he hires three bounty hunters headed by Dan Duryea to avenge him with the promise of $5000 as a reward. Taggart must flee into Apache territory to escape the wrath of the trio of hired killers.

Based on a Louis L'amour novel, this western moves at a steady clip, getting into one perilous situation to the next - it has the right modicum of action and drama. There's some decent performances from Dan Duryea as the hired gunslinger out to kill the hero Tony Young. Dan is at his usual manic self, oozing with reptilian glee and saying dry one liners. Dick Foran as a miner and Elsa Cardenas as his opportunistic wife also turn in decent performances. Yes there's some mismatched stock footage during the action sequences, but it isn't too bad. Overall a solid western with some fine twists.

This is a mediocre low budget movie. The acting is OK including Tony Young as the lead but personally I find Dan Duryea really annoying in this one. As mentioned in other reviews there are a few familiar actors from the era. An abundance of stock footage takes away from the continuity and limits some of the action scenes. The plot starts out OK but then becomes somewhat weak and the ending rushed. It has a TV movie feel and definitely is a bottom rung B movie. OK to pass the time but that's all.

This film started well and then got silly, as hero Taggart gets to meet four attractive well-coiffured women in a very short space of time, managing to keep clean-shaven when being pursued. Lifted from mediocrity by Dan Duryea (at his nastiest), several familiar support actors, and some good cinematography.

The abandoned mission looked in very good shape.

One of those movies where you get the impression you would have been better off reading the (Louis L'Amour) book. Shoot a gun, the horse throws his rider. Crack shots from people firing a revolver. Often while riding a horse. I watched it because I was reading David Carradine's Endless Highway autobiography, and it's his first film. He looks sufficiently evil, so I did enjoy parts.