Reviews


Last of the Wild Horses

Lippert fires his director.

Yeah, so, apparently Bob Lippert decided that directing a low-budget motion picture couldn't be THAT hard, or maybe he thought - as Roger Corman would a few years later - that a producer hiring himself as director was one way of keeping costs in check. After three days of shooting, and already behind schedule, Lippert gave up, fired himself, called in editor Paul Landres, handed him the footage so far completed and the script and said something like, 'Finish the movie. Do not go one minute or one dollar over budget. Figure out a way to edit it all together so that it makes some semblance of sense.' Whether Landres managed that final task is the question at hand, but let's just say this is NOT the film to sample if you're unaware of the glories of Screen Guild/Lippert and wish to watch just one. You'll think NONE of 'em have any sort of continuity whatsoever. James Ellison is in town to rob the stage coach, but instead sticks around to become a ranch hand, maybe because he likes rancher Douglass Dumbrille's pretty daughter Jane Frazee, but maybe not - pretty Mary Beth Hughes is practically throwing herself at Jimmy, but she comes with not one, but TWO comic relief stooges, one of whom is Olin Howlin and t'other is, of all people, Grady Sutton, so Jim Boy pretty much ignores her and goes with Jane, who has no comic relief stooges but DOES have Reed Hadley, who is evil - EVIL - and is doing something with horses, but - despite watching this twice - I couldn't be sure what. He seems to be, not stealing them, but bringing them BACK. Which would make him the good guy. But then why is he strangling people with a kerchief, and shooting other people in the back, and beating James Ellison in the face with a leather whip? I'm sure this all makes sense (on some other planet) but the salient fact that it has a running time of nearly 90 minutes(!) seems to indicate that Mr. Landres decided to impress the boss by using every frame of footage shot, and that it's impossible to pay attention over the long, long running time when oddities and implausibilities keep popping up like prairie gophers. Why is the cook called Curly when he has ample hair, black and greased back? Why does Jimmy never, ever, ever, ever change his shirt? Why does he go from a stage coach robber to good guy in the space of 1.5 seconds? Why, when he's accused of all sorts of awful things, do Mary Beth and Olin lie to give him an alibi? And so on. There're more, but you get the gist. Here's a tip for those of you looking to make an 'action-packed western thriller': it's probably a bad idea to stop the film dead by putting in a lengthy courtroom scene. On the plus side, Albert Glasser's score is impressive, and the fight sequence at the end is so violent and impressive that they stuck it on the beginning of the film, too, making everything either a flashback or a coma dream, I can't be sure which. Million-dollar Dialog: Hadley to henchman: 'Stick with me and you'll be wearing gold bullets!' Henchman: 'Yeah, but where, in my belt or in my back?' This was also lampooned on MST3K; I didn't watch that version, thank you very much.