Red River Range

Over the course of the Three Mesquiteers series, the lineup changed all the time. The three cowboys featured in each film never was constant...and in this case John Wayne joins the more familiar Mequiteers (Tex Terhune and Ray Corrigan...who played in quite a few more films in the series). The series was enjoyable...and neither great nor poor. Compared to most B-westerns of the day, they were a bit better than average.

In this story, the Mesquiteers are, as usual, undercover agents working for the side of nicenss. They've arrived in town to investigate an insanely organized cattle rustling scheme...one that has a portable slaughterhouse that immediately processes the beef and cuts out the middleman. Can our handsome Mequiteers...and Max...manage to get to the bottom of all this?

This film is pretty typical of a Mesquiteer film, even with Wayne in the lead and the guys going undercover. As usual, Terhune whips out Elmer...his ventriloquist dummy!! I can't stand this and audiences back in the day must have groaned when they saw a couple dummies among the crime-fighters!

AMC just premiered this film on their network. One can see that it came from a well cared for 35mm print. It appears the picture and sound were digitally mastered. It looked great in all its sweeping black and white glory. It is the best print I have ever seen of this film and compares very favorable to the other prints of this series shown on AMC.

Personally, I like John Wayne as an actor in this series of films as Stony Brook then the A pictures he would soon start to make. Who cannot like that corny dummy Elmer. There is a kind of humor in these movies made by Republic that I have never seen from any other studio. My gut feeling is that it is a Americana feeling, and I like that. As in PALS OF THE SADDLE, Wayne's character as Killer Madigan is right on target while being slightly offbeat and wonderful at the same time.

Great music, sound effects,humor and a rousing adventure make this a nifty film.

The Cattlemen's Association has called in the Mesquiteers to find cattle rustlers. They get Tex Riley to pose as Stony so Stony can arrive posing as a wanted outlaw. This gets Stony into the gang of rustlers and he alerts Tucson and Lullaby as to the next raid. But Hartley is on hand and unknown to anyone is the rustler's boss and he joins the posse with a plan that will do away with the Mesquiteers.

Three Mesquiteers is a fun series from Republic, and Red River Range is a good example with a nice mix of gunplay and humour - Polly Moran as a dude lady offers some humour and some sage advice to John Wayne who pretends to be a stranger to the old west. It's not strictly a western as it has trucks and telephones, but there's mostly fast riding and wide open spaces.

An American Western; A story about organized cattle rustlers who are operating with portable slaughterhouses and refrigerator vans. The governor asks a trio of cowboys from Mesquite County, Texas to go undercover to investigate. This installment of The Three Mesquiteers, based on the characters created by William Colt MacDonald, has the heroes in a modern day setting and it has John Wayne in a charismatic turn in a fast moving adventure. It is a low-budget production with a very straightforward plot and characteristic chases and shoot-outs. There isn't much tension build up in the conflict with the rustlers but there are some funny moments including John Wayne being told how to ride a horse and pretending he cannot. The film setting and location photography is arguably the redeeming point of this B-movie, it's running time another.

One of the more enjoyable entrées in the Three Mesquiteers series is Red River Range which finds the boys working as government agents to stop some cattle rustling.

Unbeknownst to John Wayne, Ray Corrigan, and Max Terhune the meatpacking industry has hired its own agent, Kirby Grant, to get a line on the rustling. That in itself was an interesting aspect of this film, the inflation of meat prices as a result of cattle rustling. One never does think of the economic hurt, those rustlers cause.

Kirby's cover is blown before he can infiltrate and folks in the Red River country already know the Mesquiteers are coming. So Wayne and Grant switch places and Wayne poses as an escaped killer.

The focus of the investigation is a dude ranch where some mighty strange goings on are occurring. Can't reveal what the scheme, but I assure viewers it's a lulu.

A bit more comedy than usual in this film in the person of old vaudevillian Polly Moran, an amazonian tourist at the dude ranch with eyes on the Duke. Good thing the investigation was over as soon as it was because who knows what John Wayne might have had to do to keep his cover.