The Fighting Vigilantes

An interesting concept (a crooked food wholesaler assailed by a vigilante group) is shot in the pants by crank-em-out filmmaking. Even the vaunted Lash LaRue can't pull this one out of the fire. My major complaint is the way the director used Al St. John -- he evidently was looking for Emmett Kelly and got Fuzzy instead. Ol' Fuzzy was a master of the 'sidekick' role; witty but wise, and always ready and able to save the hero at the critical moment. Here, he's just another clown, and not a very good one at that. Overall, the film is far too predictable in spite of its very different concept.

Al "Lash" LaRue really deserves much more credit than he usually gets.

He played his character very believably, despite the handicap of looking a lot like Humphrey Bogart. He was athletic enough he usually performed his own stunts, and he handled that dangerous whip as if he had been doing so since childhood.

In fact, the story is he told his producers a bit of an exaggeration, that in fact he had been handling whips since childhood, and immediately after his interview rushed out to find instruction.

A whip-wielding hero was a novelty at the time, and proved a good gimmick, good enough that Lash LaRue became both a popular movie character and even a series of comic books.

"The Fighting Vigilantes" had an interesting story and some clever dialogue, not to mention a really good cast. Fuzzy St. John played a rather schizophrenic character, sometimes funny, sometimes dour, but always equal to Lash.

Jennifer Holt is, in my not-at-all-humble opinion, terribly under-rated: She is, yes, beautiful, but she is also a darn good actress and, even more important, a really good cowgirl.

Watching her handle a pistol or mount her horse, or just ride, or just look at her other cast members, is a genuine pleasure. Maybe she was content with her career, but I believe she deserved a lot more.

Those three were more than ably backed by veteran performers, including Marshall Reed, this time with a tougher role than the ones I've usually seen him in. (I met him at a Western Film Collectors Convention in the mid-1970s and he was a really nice person, good-looking and personable, and he was a great master of ceremonies.)

George Chesebro, as the brains villain, gave an excellent performance, one of his best.

But I have to mention again the script: It all fit, with no holes, and often the dialogue was clever and even funny.

We could wish for a much better print, one not so dark, but this is a good movie even so. I strongly recommend it.

Lash and Fuzzy aim to restore law and order when a group of vigilantes take action against a crooked food distributor....

Taylor's men are robbing incoming supply wagons to enable Taylor to sell goods at inflated prices. The Vigilantes led by Frank Jackson are doing the same so the ranchers won't starve. Marshals Lash and Fuzzy arrive to try and find the real culprits.

George Chesbero makes one cunning villain as the man behind the wagon supplies getting stolen - but Lash and his sidekick are there to expose him and stop his illicit activities. The usual fast pace and energetic action is on offer. If that still isn't enough then Fuzzy writes some poetry.

The New PRC and Lash Larue. It makes you cringe, just to read those words: arguably the worst production company in Gower Gulch and a guy who sounds like a one-shot villain in a Charleton comic book. Has to be a terrible movie, even by B Western standards.

Well, it's obviously cheaply shot, but it's not awful. Al St. John provides some decent comic-sidekicking, The plot: bandits are robbing the food supplies wagons, driving up food prices, and vigilantes are robbing the food supply wagons to donate to poor people; Lash and Al get interested after wandering into town and noticing pretty Jennifer Holt. Ray Taylor directs at a decent clip. An awful lot of it is shot around a particular dusty tree on the Iverson Ranch to speed camera set-ups for DP Ernest Miller, but, hey, anything to save a buck. Lee Morgan is the laziest, biggest crybaby sheriff you ever saw. George Cheseboro is selling food at prices that look okay for 2019. By the end, it all makes sense.

And Lash Larue is a dead ringer for a young Humphrey Bogart. He even sounds like Bogey. Actress Sarah Padden once met him, looked at him for a while, then asked if his mother had ever met Bogart. His real name was Alfred Larue, born in either Michigan or Louisiana. He decided to give acting a whirl in his mid-twenties, but no major would give him a contract. Finally, PRC said if he could handle a bullwhip, they would give him a job. He said he could, almost killed himself trying to learn it on his own, then PRC paid for lessons.

Many years later, he taught Harrison Ford how to handle the whip for the first Indiana Jones movie. He died in 1996, having gone through ten wives and 78 years, and almost certainly hearing a few jokes far too many times.

Reacting to sky-high food prices, local vigilantes take on crooked town setup that includes the sheriff.

I'm afraid that even by generous matinée standards this is not a very good entry. "New PRC" unfortunately looks a lot like the old, and here the budget is bare bones, with familiar locations, a smattering of hard-riding, and some poorly staged whip cracking. La Rue is persuasive as usual, but Fuzzy is given too much silly comedic time, maybe to fill in for the sparse dialog. Then too, I could sure use more of the lovely Ms. Holt, but then I'm no longer the girl-hating front row kid I once was. Anyway, too bad LaRue got stuck at lowly PRC; he certainly qualified for better backing than what he gets here.