Straniero in patria

Mixing the historical characters and locations with the myth has been done many times, and this fast-paced western is no different. Hickock is the villain of the piece, which itself is interesting, but there are unusual elements such as the leading lady, who isn't your usual run of the mill heroine who is there for the romantic scenes. She's up there with hero, the usual stalwart, George Montgomery, jumping off stagecoaches and getting involved in hold-up. A solid B western with an energetic shootout finale.

Jack McCall Desperado is a truly revisionist look at the old west where Wild Bill Hickok's backshooting killer was really the good guy. George Montgomery plays McCall who according to this film was a much misunderstood man.

From the early silent days it was fashionable, especially in the B westerns like Jack McCall Desperado to take western characters of legend and fashion plots around their name that had absolutely nothing to do with the lives these people led. James Butler Hickok might not in real life have been a movie cowboy hero, but Jack McCall was nothing but a backshooting punk.

However in this story, Montgomery is a southern man who volunteers for the northern armies and then gets tricked by some southern troops into giving away northern positions. The fact that these guys are in Union Blue when he does it means nothing because he can't prove it. Later on Montgomery is chased to his southern mansion home where Sergeant Hickok kills McCall's father and his cousin James Seay his mother. And McCall's still a wanted man.

Even after the war is over Montgomery's a fugitive and Hickok played by Douglas Kennedy and Seay are in business. Hickok is now marshal of Deadwood City in the Dakota Territory where he's using his influence to betray the Sioux and get a nice Indian war started.

Jack McCall Desperado is an almost Kafkaesque revision of western lore with Montgomery as McCall as a bit of an idiot who constantly is getting tricked by much cleverer people than himself. It's far from a great western, but wow is it ever interesting.

Director Sidney Salkow, about whose work I know very little, apparently cranked out quite a few B Westerns in his day, and this one is not exactly bad to look at, cinematographically, but it suffers from a poor script. On the plus side, it posts a gripping beginning but loses steam.

According to other reviewers, one desperado by the name of Jack McCall did exist in the real West, and apparently he was a bad seed, shooting people in the back, among other dastardly deeds!

Well, thank God for little mercies, Montgomery portrays an upstanding character who has inadvertently given away the position of his Union troop HQ to Confederate men in Union uniform, and he has to clear his name, and save his neck from the noose for high treason, by tracking down the man to whom he drew the map... on the back of an envelope addressed to Jack McCall. That tells you that Jack would never rate the sharpest knife in the drawer. Still, although he shoots other men facing them, he is not above jumping jail and enlisting the help of pretty Angela Stevens, known in saloon circles as thieving Rose.

That the reb who can clear his name survives years of secession war, postwar yank-reb enmity, and all the shootouts at Deadwood and all over the Far West, gives you a measure of this desperado's faith in favorable fate. More faith than I have in ever retrieving the 76' I invested in this BS fest. 5/10.

For some unknown reason, in the 50s, there seems to have been an attempt to bring down the legend of Bill Hickok(see "I Killed Wild Bill Hickok, 1956). This entry plays fast and loose with history, with McCall as the framed good guy out to get villain Hickok. the time frame is all askew, starts in the Civil War and moves rapidly to Wild Bill's murder, which in reality took place in 1876, eleven years later. But that's not all; McCall was eventually hanged for his crimes, and not near as good-looking as Montgomery. Pass on this one.

Jack McCall Desperado is an interesting varient on the western story. It deals with the war of independence and the character of Jack McCall wrongly accused of being a spy.

Wild Bill Hickcock also makes an appearance as the friend of Jack's crooked cousin Bart.

The interesting blend of real people we have all heard of and their fictional and real lives make this a movie a little different from the ordinary western fair.

Also refreshingly different is the relationship between Rose, a girl who can take care of herself ie she holds up the jail to rescue Jack and tumbles from horses with a certain aplomb also!

All in all an unusual western in some respects that doesn't forget its origins and stays mainly true to formula.