Paroled - To Die

I've seen and enjoyed several Bob Steele westerns before I watched this one but there was just something about this one that left me flat. I think most of it is that Steele just didn't seem up to par...and his acting seemed rather stilted.

Doug (Steele) and Harvey Meline hate each other. However, while Doug apparently can see through this villain, the somewhat dim sheriff doesn't. Doug insists Harvey is up to something...but exactly what is still unknown. The rivalry becomes so bitter and Meline is worried Doug might find out exactly what he's up to, so he sets up Doug to take the rap for a bank robbery of Meline's bank.

Not only is the acting subpar, but the entire story is wrapped up by an external source that arrives to explain the plot and stop the baddie...which seemed pretty weak. Keep looking...there are much better B-westerns out there than this one.

Bob Steele is a tough man with a gun, but he and Kathleen Eliot like each other a lot. This doesn't suit her father, sheriff Steve Clark, who wants her to marry her other suitor, banker Karl Hackett. Hackett frames Steele for for robbing his own bank. In reality, Hackett did it; he wants the money for an oil well. Steele is sentenced to 20 years.... and shows up the next day with a parole.

it's a nice little story, with some good sequences in it, but it's hardly a topnotch Steele western. He has little to do in the way of physical action, and while he's fine getting on and off a horse, there's no fighting or big stunts in this.

Steele had started out in the silents under the direction of his father, Robert Bradbury senior (Steele was junior), and although he would eventually learn to deliver a line, his flat, emphatic voice was not really suited for the talkies. Still, he was a fine physical presence, and this is a decent little B western.

The action really begins when Karl Hackett uses Bob Steele's bandana to frame him for robbing his own bank.The sheriff (Steve Clark) wants his daughter (Kathleen Eliot) to marry the banker Hackett. They both try to run Steele out of town. Republic Pictures gets another winner thanks to a great cast and some familiar faces in Budd Buster and Frank Ball playing the judge. Good to see Tex Ritter's sidekick Horace Murphy playing the drifter Lucky.

A crooked banker, tired of having Bob Steele thwart his repeated attempts to steal from his own bank and angry that Steele stole the girl he was interested in, frames him and has him thrown in prison. Bob gets a very quick parole though (The phrase, "revolving door" comes to mind.), coming back to straighten things out, once and for all.

Paroled - To Die (great title) isn't as atmospheric as other Republic B-westerns and has a few lapses in logic. However, it's fast-paced enough and Bob Steele, one of the most atypical in looks and mannerisms of all the Saturday matinée western stars, is always a lot of fun to watch.

Some of the best scenes involve Steele's crashing of the town dance and his cat-and-mouse games with the bad guys, in the hills outside of town.

As Douglas Redfern, Bob Steele just isn't engaging. He's handsome and a decent actor (most times), but he doesn't have the energy or charisma that a role like this needs. Everybody else in the cast is extremely wooden, rarely doing anything other than recite their inane dialogue as though they were porposefully repressing any and all desire and ability to actually act. The camerawork is fairly static and in only a few scenes do the filmmakers attempt to show off the beautiful countryside the movie was shot in. So, yeah, the jokes aren't funny, some of the acting is (when it shouldn't be), the characters are as flat as cardboard cutouts and the story is predictable and slow. Only for Bob Steele fans and hard-core 1930s B-Western affectionados.