Caravane de l'enfer

The Painted Stallion is a nice, if somewhat short chapterplay. It's got a lot going for it...Ray Corrigan, Hoot Gibson, Jack Perrinb(as Davy Crockett(, Duncan Renaldo (in a limited though slimy villain role), Hal Taliaferro (as Jim Bowie)...and a lot of great action scenes.

My only real complaint about this serial is that there is way too much reuse of footage...in fact one sequence is repeated word-for-word in two separate chapters. There are a couple of canyon ambushes that feature the same people falling to their dooms in each ambush. I know that they hafta do what they hafta do to cut costs...but that is a tad ridiculous.

Other than that, this is a really enjoyable serial, especially for a western serial. I'm a fan of the old b-westerns but western serials tend to drag on interminably at times. This one was fast paced and a joy to watch.

Over the years, I found myself daydreaming about this serial from time to time. It was my introduction to the Saturday matinee habit which followed for five or six more years. Later, with the advent of VCR's I learned that a copy of this serial was available and it now occupies a spot on my videotape library shelf. I'm still of two minds as to whether the purchase was a wise or foolish move. I must admit that I did enjoy the regular dosage of suspense. These closers recalled the discussions my chums and I would have trying to resolve the hero's predicament before the next Saturday. Occasionally we would recall the two or three scenes which were added to the story but had been omitted from the end of last week's chapter. Still and all, we didn't complain and felt that our 10¢ had been very well spent. The viewing of the serial several decades later was, on the whole, a disappointment. The reason is that in 1938, I was always allowed to spend a week in suspense, sounding out my buddies' soutions and comparing them with mine. The following Saturday, of course, the solution was revealed. As for the story itself, I identified with the boy hero completely. The light-hearted comic relief was much appreciated as well and served to ease the tension of the exciting segments. The concluding chapter when "all was revealed" was always a disappointment for I had already conjured up a solution far more exciting and thrilling than the one the writers ever thought of. Of course, to a ten-year old, the budget and elaboration prohibited the use of my quite logical, but enormously expensive resolution and so I always felt somewhat let down when the final chapter appeared. Our local cineman was jammed each Saturday with screaming and howling boys and girls sitting on the edge of their seats in order not to miss a second of the serial and the clarification of the dangers our heroes faced. And all for a dime, too!! Ah, the good old days!

Lou Fulton, fortunately, only made a small number of film appearances--and they were mostly in westerns. He played a VERY offensive and unfunny guy named 'Elmer'--a guy who stutters and contorts his face in a palsied manner and seems almost subhuman--all in the name of laughs! His appearance in "The Painted Stallion" is a major strike against this movie serial. Are the rest of the cast up to the task of making the viewer forget about Fulton's ridiculously bad acting?

This western serial is apparently set around 1820. So, you see Jim Bowie and Davy Crocket--the same men who died at the Alamo in 1836. Yet, despite being such a very, very early western, you'd never know it because everyone fires revolvers and wears cowboy hats--which hadn't yet come into use. The earliest revolvers were being invented then and each chamber was hand-loaded (there were no cartridges) and a gun might be fired five or six times--but then took several minutes to reload. Well, that's NOT the case here, as the Colt .45 and other anachronistic weapons were used throughout the film. I know many viewers won't care about this sort of thing, but seeing clothing and guns from 30-40 years in the future annoys me--probably in part because I am a retired history teacher. Get it right folks--it just means doing a tiny bit of homework before you make the film.

As far as the acting goes, I was a bit disappointed. Although Ray Corrigan was the leading man, I assumed it was more an ensemble cast with his buddy, Hoot Gibson, getting equal treatment in the film--and I liked this thought since I really like Hoot Gibson films. Well, Gibson was pretty much a minor character. I also didn't like all the attention the kid (who was SUPPOSED to be a young Kit Carson) got in the film--as most child actors are pretty annoying. So, with these folks starring in the film, it's obvious that Fulton's bad acting would NOT be overshadowed by the rest of the cast--since the cast were all semi-mythical representations of real western characters. Carson, Bowie and Crocket did NOT pal around together!

Overall, this isn't a terrible western serial, but it isn't all that good of one either. There are many dull patches, the reuse of scenes for the sake of economy and the mistakes I've already mentioned. While most serials were rather slapped together and often played loose with the facts, even without all this the serial wasn't nearly as interesting as many others such as "The Adventures of Captain Marvel" or "Spy Smasher". Worth a look only if you are a devoted serial junkie.

...which featured THREE Good Guys instead of just two, there was THIS movie, which started out as a Republic Serial. I apologize for all the exposition in this paragraph, but if you consider that the theaters were running Serials over 100 years ago, there are a lot of people who have never even heard of a Serial. If you don't know what a "Serial" was, think back before there was TV. (Yes, kids - there was a time when the only place people could get their entertainment (with a moving PICTURE) was at a movie theater. Today, they don't make 'em any more. The modern equivalent is a TV series, and most of those aren't one long story, spread out over X-number of "Parts". Serials were generally made for a young audience and they would run on Saturday afternoon and they would be the first things you'd see before the Feature Film. Features could run anywhere from 57 minutes to 90 minutes, up to an hour-and-a-half back then, and stuff like the "Star Wars" movies and today's Features, for example, can run virtually ANY length was also where you got your News (which was at least a week old), and not like today, when there are things like "LIVE shots" from anywhere on the planet). Those were called "Newsreels". Each of those things ran somewhere around ten minutes, plus or minus a minute or two. (Apologies to those who already know this stuff, but it's background for those who DON'T. Back in the day, the theaters wouldn't accept them unless they ran at least 6 minutes. Think "Looney Tunes" or "The Three Stooges" (the "Stooges" shorts ran somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 to 20 minutes). Notorious cheapskate Leon Schlesinger, the original Producer of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies (Warner Bros. Cartoons were either one or the other) were usually no more than a frame or two longer than 6 minutes, but NO longer (by orders from Leon). Those three things (along with cartoons) were called "Short Subjects" or simply "Shorts". This movie consists of all 8 Serial installments, edited together - minus the preview of the next installment (seen at the end of each part) along with the recap (seen at the beginning of everything after Part 1), when a Narrator would say something like, "Last time you remember..." and they would show you scenes from the previous part - or several previous parts - before the story continued. That was just in case you hadn't seen whatever highlights came before the part you were seeing THIS time, so you'd be able to come in at any point after Part 1, but you'd still know the high points of whatever came before the one you were seeing now.

Anyway, "The Painted Stallion" is pretty standard Western Movie fare, but the thing that breaks the formula with other Westerns is that there are 3 heroes who rode together (instead of a single hero, like Gene Autry or Roy Rogers), and the movies would always have a "sidekick", so the Good Guy would have someone to talk to when no one else was around. The sidekick was guaranteed to be on the Good Guy's side in the story, as well as providing the "Comic Relief", for when things got heavy for the Good Guy. And of course there would be any number of Bad Guys and their evil minions, because you'd have a pretty boring film without Bad Guys to vanquish, right before the ending. Kids, when you study what comprises a story (even Shakespeare or "A Christmas Carol"), you'll learn about Protagonists (Good Guys) and Antagonists (Bad Guys). And I was so busy explaining The Old Days, I missed the end of this one! Now I'll have to find out when it's running again, just to see the last 10 minutes!! I'll update this review after that. What I CAN tell you at the moment is that "The Painted Stallion" was an enjoyable old-time Western, with lots of action and "Bang-bang-shoot-'em-up"-type scenes, as a good western should! I can tell you that one of our three heroes, the one in the South of the border Sombrero is none other than Duncan Renaldo. He was one of the original Three Mesquiteers, and when TV finally showed up (delayed a few years by this little thing called World War II), Renaldo (spelled "Reynaldo" later)

Though no years are actually mentioned the time that the action of this serial takes place is 1821 when Mexico gained its independence from Spain. LeRoy Mason and his chief henchman Duncan Renaldo have been running things for the Spanish government in Santa Fe, but now with a new country and a shift in power, their position is compromised purportedly.

Of course this is of some interest in Washington, DC where the president would have been James Monroe and the Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. They send Ray Corrigan on a diplomatic mission to negotiate a trade treaty for Americans in Santa Fe.

Ray Corrigan may have been the most unusual diplomat ever sent on a trade mission by our State Department. Instead of going to Mexico City to negotiate with the government there, he's sent to Santa Fe to deal with provincial officials. And of course every diplomat I know comes not only with letters of credentials, but six guns and buckskins. Six guns, by the way, that Samuel Colt has not invented yet.

Corrigan hooks up with a wagon train headed by wagonmaster Hoot Gibson. Also along for the ride are scouts Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie who never met until the Alamo and also there's young scout-in-training, Kit Carson.

Gibson and Corrigan with the aide of their trusty scouts and a mysterious Indian princess who rides a painted stallion and shoots 'singing' arrows get the wagon train through and then have to deal with the bad guys after getting to Santa Fe.

Every time I see one of these old movie serials I am astounded at how bad they are. Forget Olivier and Brando, the guys who had to say some of this dialog with a modicum of sincerity may be the greatest players the world has ever known. I can't see how the cast kept a straight face.

I guess this only proves one thing, one of the qualifications of a U.S. diplomat back in the day was one's ability with a six gun. And seeing how Ray Corrigan constantly got himself out of one scrape after another, John Quincy Adams would have been proud.