There’s
no getting away from it: Badman’s Territory
is hardly one of the better Randolph Scott Westerns. The New York Times was quite generous when it called it “a
lumbering action melodrama” and added that “Westerns seem to have a lot more
life when told rapidly and concisely.” The day after, the Times’s sister organ The New
York Daily News commented, “The quantity of events is not marked by the
quality; in most of the conflicts the participants are too obviously a group of
actors going rather awkwardly through the paces of a motion-picture scene.”
Worth a watch, but...
It has a
totally preposterous plot and rather too much plot at that. In 1944 and ’45 Universal
had had hits by grouping as many horror characters as you could think of in
movies like House of Frankenstein and
House of Dracula, in which Dracula,
Frankenstein’s monster, wolf men, hunchbacks and mad doctors crowded the cast
list, and RKO must have thought they would have a go at that with outlaws. They
would put the James gang, the Daltons, Sam Bass and Belle Starr all in the same
movie. Surprisingly, it was a box-office success. The pubic liked it. Mind,
Hollywood is still pulling that trick, with cartoon superheroes jostling cheek
by, er, jowl in blockbusters of unending direness.
Never
mind history. In this one a character recounts how, after the Coffeyville bank
raids that did for the Daltons (1892), “They got the James boys. A man named
Ford shot Jesse and the law got Frank.” This of course was 1882. But hey, who’s
counting? It is a fact that the James boys, the Daltons, Sam Bass and
Belle Starr never congregated in any year in Quinto, or indeed anywhere else,
but well, it’s all a bit of fun, n’est-ce pas?
Randy is
honest county sheriff Mark Rowley who is railroaded by a corrupt and sadistic
US marshal (Morgan Conway).
Randolph the Great
Johnny Rowley (James Warren, briefly popular when
he stood in at RKO during Tim Holt’s wartime absence) is the sheriff’s younger brother
who is tempted by the dark side and finally rides off with the wicked Dalton
brothers (Steve Brodie as Bob, Phil Warren as Grat and William Moss as Bill –
they always put Bill in for some reason; no sign of Emmett). The action is
centered on the town of Quinto, the ‘capital’ of the outlaws’ homeland in the
Oklahoma strip. Naturally there is a dishonest saloon keeper in Quinto, with
the 3:10ish name of Ben Wade (Richard Hale) and a dubious colonel
running the place (Ray Collins). There follows a highly complex series of plot
developments which you need to work hard at to keep up with.
Of
course there is a comic old-timer sidekick and naturally this is Gabby Hayes.
Equally naturally there are a couple of dames. The rather lantern-jawed Australian
Ann Richards plays an English newspaper editor (they called her English to get
round the odd accent) for Randy to fall for and there’s the de rigueur rather more louche saloon gal,
played by Virginia Sale. It’s Indian Territory, technically, so RKO thought we
better throw Chief Thundercloud in there. And that isn’t half the cast. You
see, it’s pretty crowded in Quinto, with all those clichéd stock characters
walking about.
Gabby is Coyote
Lawrence
Tierney is Jesse James, which is good. I always like a Tierney and Lawrence was
just as much a rowdy as his brother Scott Brady and ideal as the hooligan
outlaw. Lawrence didn’t actually do many Westerns, more’s the pity, though in
one of them, Best of the Badmen in
1951, he was Jesse James again. Tom Tyler (star of silent and early talkie
Westerns, Captain Marvel and small player in many a John Ford oater - he was Luke Plummer in Stagecoach - as well as a
host of TV shows in the 50s) is brother Frank but, as so often in Jesse James
movies, he is just a minor character to be ordered about. Nestor Paiva is
enjoyable (he always was) as Sam Bass, who naturally organizes a horse race, and
I must say that Isabelle Jewell makes a lovely Belle Starr – who wins the race.
If you have ever seen a picture of the real Belle Starr, you might think she
was a touch too beautiful. She would have been a much better bet for Randy than
the snooty editor lady.
Isabelle is Belle
The real Belle
RKO got
Tim Whelan to direct, the Thief of Bagdad
man. Badman’s Territory was his first
Western and he only did three, though one, Rage at Dawn, another outlaw-brother yarn, this time about the Renos, wasn’t at
all bad and also starred Randolph Scott. Four people (Jack Natteford, Luci
Ward, Clarence Upson Young and Bess Boyle) worked on the screenplay of Badman's Territory and it may
have been a question of too many cooks. At any rate the script is a pretty corny
mish-mash of clichés.
Quinto: where the welcome mat reads Reach, stranger!
Well,
clunky it may have been but people went to see it. So much so that in 1948 (oh,
golden year) they made a sequel (in which the Daltons strangely came back to
life), Return of the Badmen, and it
was one of those cases where the sequel was a lot better than the original. Return is a hugely enjoyable Western
with an equally preposterous plot but a vast amount of energy. It’s a ‘proper’
Western, the sort my dad liked. It was directed by Ray Enright, altogether a
better proposition, and despite having several of the same writers as Badman’s Territory was a tighter,
better-constructed Western with zip and pzazz; plus, they added The Sundance Kid and Billy the Kid, so you get even more outlaws. I recommend it.
As for Badman’s Territory, well, yes, it’s a Randolph
Scott Western of the 1940s and as such is definitely worth a watch. Put your
credulity on hold and enjoy it for what it is. But don’t expect too much. No
one would put it at the top of the Randy list.
I suspect that the town of Quinto was inspired by Ingalls, Oklahoma, which was a popular hangout for outlaws, including Bill Doolin and other former members of the Dalton gang. An attempt by lawmen to corral the outlaws lead to a gunfight in which 3 good guys were killed in return for only one bad guy captured.
ReplyDeleteI like you comparison with the monster mash movies that Universal was doing at that time.
Richard
Yes, it could have been Ingalls.
DeletePlenty of Westerns dealt with this outlaws' 'free zone', of course, most notably the True Grits.
Jeff