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| THE TEXAS RANGERS (director:
Phil Karlson; screenwriters: story by Frank
Gruber/Richard Schayer; cinematographer: Ellis Carter;
editor: Al Clark; music: Mischa
Bakaleinikoff; cast: George
Montgomery (Johnny Carver), Noah
Beery Jr. (Buff Smith), William Bishop
(Sam Bass), Gale Storm (Helen
Fenton), Jerome Courtland (Danny Bonner), John Litel (Maj.
John D. Jones), Ian MacDonald (The
Sundance Kid), John Doucette
(Butch Cassidy), John Dehner (John
Wesley Hardin), Douglas Kennedy (Dave
Rudabaugh), Jock O'
Mahoney (Duke Fisher), Joseph
Fallon (Jimmy), Stanley Andrews (Marshal
Gorey), Dick Wessel (Arkansas), Trevor Bardette
(telegraph operator), Julian
Rivero (Pecos Palmer)
;
Runtime: 74; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Bernard Small;
Columbia Pictures; 1951) "Action-packed B Western about the Texas Rangers." Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz Phil
Karlson ("Gunman's Walk"/"Rampage"/"Walking Tall")
directs an action-packed B Western about the Texas
Rangers in the post-civil period fighting outlaws on
the Texas frontier. It's based on the story by
Frank Gruber and is written in a hokey way by Richard
Schayer. The
film is set in 1874 in Texas, after the Union Army
of Occupation departs and Texas becomes a lawless
place. The Texas legislature re-finances the
disbanded Texas Rangers and they return with their
leader Maj. John D. Jones (John
Litel), a former Confederate officer. Within
two years the Rangers bring law and order to the
West, until the ruthless train robber Sam Bass (William
Bishop) organizes
the surviving outlaws to work together, with him as
leader, in a gang called the Longriders
Association. With a new crime wave, the public
calls for a better response from the Texas Rangers and
the governor threatens to cut off its funding unless
there are better results. Thereby Major Jones comes
up with a radical plan to release the bank robbers Johnny
Carver (George Montgomery), serving
a life sentence in prison, and his sidekick
prison mate Buff Smith (Noah Beery
Jr.), both served under Jones in the Civil War,
and both men are promised by Jones a full pardon and
job as Rangers if they help break up the gang they
know so well. Problems
arise on the trail when Carver guns down in revenge
the sleazy bank robber, The Sundance Kid
(Ian
MacDonald), who double-crossed him during
the Waco bank hold-up and caused his arrest.
When Carver wants to renege on his promise to
the Major and desert, his kid brother Danny (Jerome
Courtland), a Texas Ranger, is
disappointed. When Carver's brother is killed in
an ambush led by Dave
Rudabaugh (Douglas Kennedy),
Carver decides
to honor his vow to the Major and figures out
how to become part of the Bass gang so he can
set a trap for them when he gives them info of a
train carrying a million dollars of gold. The
familiar story of the reformed criminal is
trite, but that final shootout on the train is a
beauty. Gale
Storm plays the thankless hackneyed role of the
crusading editor of a Waco newspaper, whose
publisher father was killed by the Sundance Kid
in the Waco bank robbery and, who after
misjudging Carver, falls in love with him. There
are no surprises nor does it have anything
worthwhile to say in its fictionalized telling
of the history of the Texas Rangers, but it's
lively and entertaining. REVIEWED ON 9/21/2012 GRADE: B- Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews" © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ |