Arizona Days

Bob Custer plays a detective hired to find out who's rustling cattle down in Arizona in this energetic, lightweight western. Clean-cut Custer is outshone by bald-headed J. P. McGowan as the leader of the rustlers. Online prints seem to be missing 10 minutes of footage.

In the days of the silent film, the western genre surprisingly prospered, and Bob Custer was one of the well-known participants of the horse operas of the time. He's a pleasant enough actor and works well with his leading lady, Peggy Montgomery (who incidentally isn't Baby Peggy, silent screen moppet who was born Peggy-Jean Montgomery). She's a good little actress who has some conflict with Custer before the final reel.

In 44 minutes there isn't much room for plot but if you like action, horses, and tales of treachery, with a love angle on the side, this film is as good as any. I saw it on the small screen with some lovely colour tints but alas, without a musical score, but it was still watchable and enjoyable. If you like westerns, give this one a look.

Aside from being a silent film and having very nice cinematography, this B-western is pretty typical of the genre. Had it been made a decade or more later, it might have starred Gene Autry or Roy Rogers--it was just the sort of formulaic sort of entertainment at which they excelled.

The film is about cattle rustling. Two agents (one disguised as a wimpy Easterner) are sent to investigate who is responsible for all the cattle being stolen. Eventually, they figure out who's responsible and as expected, there is a finale that includes beating the stuffing out of the baddies. Nothing too surprising here and at 44 minutes, it's quite short--even for a B.

Arizona is a very strange and different place (sunnier than Germany) in where there are a lot of cows and consequently a lot of rustlers who makes strange cattle dealings. There is also an obscure cattlemen's association who will never stop trying to defend its herding interests.

In Arizona the girls shoot their lovers in order to fall in love with them. Their fiancées likes that so much that they do horse acrobatics in order to impress them. (Not to mention that in Arizona even the scarecrows ride and the real cowboys wear hats five sizes bigger than their heads.)

In Arizona the members of the supposedly secret cattlemen's association wants to arrest the leader of a gang. They write code letters than can be read by the smart Arizona girls. They use other secrets identification papers hidden in golf clubs which are discovered by rude cowboys who use them in a proper way, that is to say, not playing with them, but breaking them, natürlich!.

Unfortunately Arizona is place, as it happens in the films of the rest of the world, even Germany, in where the good-natured persons beat the wretched ones in spite the evil tricks that are done.

"Arizona Days", directed and starred by the prolific Herr J. P. McGowan, is a piece of light entertainment, a B western without pretensions but it's effective and that's a very important achievement for this kind of movie, certainly.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must to return to his German darkness.