Blazing Guns

"Blazing Guns" is a very, very typical sort of B-western. It's very ordinary--competently made but offering nothing more. So, if you are a fan of the genre, you'll enjoy it. And, if you aren't, this is one that won't convince you to watch more.

Like all of the Ken Maynard-Hoot Gibson films, this one has the team working as undercover marshals. The governor has decided to send them into a lawless town to investigate. Now when I say 'lawless', this doesn't mean there isn't any law--it's just that they are all bought and paid for and act more like a gang of thugs than lawmen. So, it's up to the duo to restore law and order...and niceness.

Maynard, as usual, plays lead. And Gibson plays a combination of comic relief and second lead--offering a few laughs here and there. All in all, not a bad film at all, though the plot is VERY familiar and there isn't anything to distinguish this from a thousand similar films of the era. Competent.

A competent Monogram B Western, this otherwise harmless programmer is a bit painful to watch. Ken Maynard looks fat and old near the tail end of his career, and attempts to have him play straight man to Gibson's usual low-key humor are largely mechanical. Gibson is, as always fine and steals every two shot they are paired in with his low-key mugging -- if you're not familiar with his work, his style may remind you of Charles Grodin, who seems to have picked up a lot of Gibson's tricks. The pair of aging stars still look good on horseback, but ...

Like most Monogram westerns, this story of two marshals sent in to clean up a town is written and shot in a very conservative fashion and, to the modern eye, may seem annoyingly eked out with shots of men riding horses that could be shortened or cut. But in large part, the western was built on these shots and veteran dp Marcel Le Picard's cinematography is well calculated with many beautiful compositions.