Bad Jim

As is well known in movie lore, John Clark Gable is the posthumous son of Clark Gable and his last wife Kay Williams Spreckels. By dint of his father's estate and the fact his mom had previously been married to the heir of the Spreckels sugar fortune, young Mr. Gable had a fairly comfortable childhood. In fact his mom took great care to raise him with a degree of privacy and away from Hollywood. She never allowed him to be photographed for an understandable fear of kidnappers.

I guess when he decided to claim his dad's legacy he should have picked a better vehicle than this. I suppose it's only natural that I look for something of his father's persona in him on the screen, but I didn't see it. Probably takes after mom.

Gable, along with cowboy pals James Brolin and Richard Roundtree come upon outlaw Pepe Serna who rode with the recently deceased Billy the Kid. In fact he's got the Kid's horse with him which he's willing to swap. Young Gable does swap with him and he and friends decide that they're not exactly upwardly mobile punching cattle. They decide to become outlaws.

Naturally after killing several members of a posse trailing them after they rob a bank they become notorious. Of course the fact that it's every day you have a typical outlaw gang of three consisting of two white and one black man doesn't give them the least little clue that splitting up might increase their survival chances. But these three aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.

So with this less than sterling debut in this film, John Clark Gable decided the movie life wasn't for him.

What the producers should have done is find a vehicle that would have teamed him with that other posthumous son of a screen legend, Tyrone Power, Jr. Now that might have brought in a few dollars at the box office. And young Power definitely has his father's persona.

It's a bad movie. its full of mistakes,bad and no-making-sense dialogues and bad acting.Gable ll "plays" like amateur... Brolin washed and brushed hair is so extra terrestrial in the wild west desert and for a life of a macho desperado. Roundtrees is the only oasis in the film but can't save it from the director's awful dream...

Not the worst western I've ever seen, but hardly a good one. The lead actor and son of a Hollywood icon is not the actor his dad was. Most of his dialogue sounded overly rehearsed and hardly natural. Then there was a song played in the middle of the movie, probably called Renegade that sounded like something from Air Supply in a late 70s or early 80s in a bad cop movie. This movie like many westerns seemed to not only endorse prostitution, but this one made no big deal about the poor Mexican underage prostitute who appeared to be about 12 years old. Realistic? Probably, but why did this movie gloss over it like it was no big deal. I guess the words pedophile or statutory rape didn't exist in the old west like they do in the new Hollywood. And the wagon train Indian fight was poorly choreographed at best.

Corny movie...

waste of time watching.

If you see this in a bin for $5.00 at Wal-Mart save your money....

trust me, you will thank me for avoiding watching this Save your money and buy a Taco Bell lunch box instead.

My review was written in April 1990 after watching the film on RCA/Columbia video cassette.

"Bad Jim" is a good-natured Western about three kindly desperadoes and Billy the Kid's horse. It's a direct-to-video release that should satisfy sagebrush buffs.

Filmmaker Clyde Ware brings authenticity and enthusiasm to the moribund genre. Casting interestingly teams up James Brolin, who played Clark Gable in "Gable and Lombard" with sidekick John Clark Gable, the late star's son and a dead ringer for Kevin Costner. Third member of the triumvirate is Richard Roundtree, in good form and overdue for a Western since "Charley One-Eye" 17 years earlier.

The trio is intercepted by Pepe Serna, on the lam from the authorities. He had been riding with the late Billy the Kid and sells them what he claims to be the Kid's horse. Gable renames it Jim and the three ne'er-do-wells begin a series of bank robberies posing as Billy and his gang.

Rather uneventful film is long on atmosphere, with good lensing of Arizona locations and well-researched folklore (notably a primitive form of lacrosse played by a local Indian tribe). Ware avoids racism or condescension, though his script has a little too much hindsight at times, such as Gable lecturing a young woman on tolerance: "Put yourself in the other guy's shoes or moccasins".

Brolin is comfortable in the saddle and Gable shows promise. Supporting cast is peppered with veterans like Ty Hardin and Rory Calhoun who are fun to see again in this context.