Red River Range

Good cast, great William Lava score, and generally high production values -- marred only slightly by an obviously fake riding scene with young Sammy McKim -- raise this Three Mesquiteers programmer from the routine.

Bob Livingston had been replaced at this point in the series by a very good-looking John Wayne as Stony Brooke, but Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune continued as Tucson Smith and Lullaby Joslin.

Veteran Polly Moran made a great lady dude visiting out West, and the bad guys -- a large number -- were very believable.

Maybe this is just exactly what we expect from the pros at Republic (I like the sound of that word) Pictures, but George Sherman's directing was actually above the average. He used a moving camera to excellent benefit and got some superlative performances out of, perhaps especially, Crash Corrigan, who was in great shape, and looked handsome and heroic, and gave a very credible performance.

Three Mesquiteers movies after the very earliest entries were programmers and probably were never expected to be considered classics, but they are. In part because of the unfailingly high quality of casts and in part because of the generally good quality of story.

There was a lack of consistency in the settings, this one being set at about the time of the filming, with cars and trucks figuring as prominently as horses.

But it all fits; there is no anachronistic feeling.

This is good stuff, and I recommend "Red River Range," which you can find at YouTube.

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.

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.

No matter what film John Wayne appears in he's always interesting to watch. Besides the fact that as an actor he was used by novelists and directors to reinvent the American west, as a personality he was endearing to watch, especially in this film where he is more important than the storyline.

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.