Revenge of the Virgins (1959)

Revenge of the Virgins is a 1959 B-western but it’s no ordinary B-western. This is a wild crazy nudie B-western written by the legendary Ed Wood Jr. It was directed by Peter Perry Jr and he’s almost as interesting as Ed Wood.

Now Ed Wood Jr is notorious for topping so many lists of the worst film directors all time. I can actually think of a couple of worse directors than Wood but he would definitely make my All-Time Five Worst Directors list. On the other hand, as a screenwriter and novelist he was surprisingly interesting and entertaining. You’ll always get touches of Ed Wood craziness and weirdness but he was quite capable of taking a deliberately tongue-in-cheek approach and as a writer his craziness could be, in its own odd way, inspired.

I don’t think I will ever again be tempted to watch another movie that he directed but if I see his name listed in the credits as screenwriter of a movie then I will seek out that movie. I consider The Violent Years, a juvenile delinquent movie that he scripted, to be a must-see movie.

Peter Perry Jr directed a whole slew of nudie movies in the 60s and they’re all good-natured and offbeat and enjoyable. Perry understood how to make a nudie movie that offered more than just naked ladies.

Revenge of the Virgins deals with an Apache tribe trying to stop gold prospectors from moving into its territory. There are only a handful of tribe members left. Less than a dozen in fact. They are all young, female and incredibly hot. They all spend the entire movie topless. The leader of the tribe is a blonde babe. She was kidnapped and raised by the tribe.

Melvin Potter (Charles Veltmann Jr) and his wife Ruby (Jodean Lawrence) have just arrived in a small town out West and hope to buy the saloon. They need money.

Grizzled old prospector Pan Taggart (Stanton Pritchard) may be able to help them. He knows where there is an abundance of gold for the taking. They will need to hire some gunmen. The local Apaches are not friendly.

The expedition sets out. Five men and a woman, all armed. They don’t trust each other too much, with good reason.

And then suddenly an arrow comes from out of nowhere and the expedition is one man short. They know the Apaches are now stalking them although they don’t know that the Apaches are all gorgeous young babes. They may be gorgeous bare-breasted babes but they’re dead shots with a bow and they’re smart enough not to contemplate a frontal assault. Their plan is obviously to pick off the members of the expedition one by one.

This would be the time for the expedition members to present a united front but they’re still planing to double-cross each other. And those Apache gals just keep stalking and shooting and then scooting.

That’s it for the plot but it’s a perfectly serviceable plot for a B-western.

What makes the movie interesting is the tone. Right at the start we get a voiceover that tells us that it may be just a tall tale told by old prospectors around the campfire. Clearly we’re not supposed to take the movie too seriously. But it does not become an out-and-out spoof nor does it indulge in out-and-out goofiness. In fact it gets rather dark at times. This is a story of a party of people being stalked by warriors who are smart, skilful, ruthless and remorseless. There’s a certain atmosphere of doom and desperation descending upon out gold-crazed adventurers. They haven’t even set eyes on the amazonian warrior girls who are slaughtering them one at a time.

When people talk about Ed Wood Jr there’s a tendency to focus on his most famous and most catastrophically inept movies as a director, such as Plan 9 from Outer space. It’s actually much more interesting to look at Wood’s forays into relatively conventional storytelling, both as director (in his attempt at a noirish crime thriller, Jail Bait) and as screenwriter (in the hugely entertaining girl juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years) and as a novelist. What makes these efforts fascinating is that they are fairly straightforward but with a slightly off-kilter tone and occasional WTF moments.

Revenge of the Virgins follows that pattern. The plot is slightly outlandish but it does not venture into the world of the crazy and impossible. The tone is just slightly odd in an unsettling way. Is this trying to be a gritty dark-edged western or is it deliberately trying to be offbeat? Is it intended to be tongue-in-cheek? It’s hard to be sure, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Revenge of the Virgins is also, in a weird kind of way, a girl gang movie. And Ed Wood was obsessed with girl gangs.

The Apache maidens are all extremely pretty and if you’re into bare breasts you won’t be disappointed.
An oddball movie but I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the classic Ed Wood-scripted juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years (1956) and his wild juvenile delinquent novel Devil Girls. And I’ve reviewed Jail Bait (1954), the only movie directed by Wood that is almost watchable.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Peter Perry Jr’s sexploitation movies and I recommend all of them - The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966), Kiss Me Quick! (1964), My Tale Is Hot (1964) and The Joys of Jezebel (1970).

The Quick and the Dead (1995)

Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995) is a western with a definite spaghetti western vibe.

A Mysterious Stranger rides into town. A gunslinger who doesn’t say very much and mostly gives the impression of being tortured and dangerous. But the twist is, the gunslinger is a girl! Since she doesn’t talk much you could call her The Woman With No Name (although eventually we discover that her name is Ellen). The fact that the gunslinger is female and is played by Sharon Stone who was, in the wake of Basic Instinct, briefly a very big star was the movie’s main selling point. In fact, its only real selling point. The producers figured that was enough but they were wrong and the movie performed poorly at the box office.

There are lots of gunslingers in town (the town is called Redemption). They’re there for a gunfighting competition organised by John Herod (Gene Hackman), a slimy individual who runs the town. The competition will be a series of gunfights with the last man left alive walking off with a huge cash prize.

The Woman With No Name has, naturally, a secret. She has come to Redemption for revenge. She wants revenge for something that happened many years earlier. At the time she was just a little girl so of course the man she wants to kill doesn’t recognise her. She enters the competition.

The only other notable contestants are the Kid, played by Leonardo DiCaprio (who looks about twelve years old although he was twenty at the time), and Cort (Russell Crowe).

Cort doesn’t want to be there. He was once a killer and an outlaw but he got religion and became a preacher. He doesn’t believe in killing any more. Herod intends to force him to fight. It’s not clear if Herod wants Cort dead or just humiliated.

There are about sixteen gunslingers in the competition but we know that the only ones likely to survive long enough to make it to the movie’s inevitable final showdown are the ones played by top-billed cast members. Which means Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman and Russell Crowe. The others, played by supporting actors, are just there to get gunned down one by one which means that most of the movie’s interminable series of gunfights generate no suspense whatsoever. Crucially, we have no reason to care what happens to these guys. We just want them to get killed off as quickly as possible so we can get to the important climactic gunfights.

That’s the movie’s single biggest problem. It’s too long and there are too many gunfights and it gets repetitive. It lessens the impact of the gunfights that really matter, the ones involving the movie’s stars.

Cort is of course forced to fight. Ellen isn’t interested in winning the competition but she will have to fight as well. Eventually only four gunslingers are left alive and none of them have any interest in winning the money. They have other motivations.

I’ve never been the biggest Gene Hackman fan but he’s OK here. Herod is of course just a stereotypical western sinister bad guy. He’s a bit too much of an evil comic-book super-villain which means the final confrontations become simplistic good vs evil battles.

I don’t think I’ve seen more than one or two of Leonardo DiCaprio’s movies so I have no feelings one way or the other about him as an actor. He’s adequate here in a not very interesting rôle.

I’ve only seen a handful of Russell Crowe’s movies but I thought he was superb in Master and Commander. The Quick and the Dead was his first Hollywood movie. He has the most interesting part and gets to do some real acting and he’s very impressive.

Sharon Stone (whom I loved in Basic Instinct and Total Recall) spends a lot of time brooding. The Quick and the Dead really did nothing for her career. On the plus side there is some attempt to give her character some complexity. Unlike the other gunfighters she is not a natural killer. She is repelled by killing but her desire for revenge compels her to kill. She doesn’t like what it is doing to her. This inner conflict is the movie’s biggest strength and it’s handled reasonably well.

Another problem is that the central premise is just a little bit silly and far-fetched. OK, there’s a big cash prize but realistically why would any gunfighter enter a competition in which his chances of being killed are ridiculously high?

The look of the film is an uneasy mix of grunginess and cartoonish exaggeration.

Lady gunfighter movies were nothing new. Raquel Welch had made such a movie, Hannie Caulder, way back in 1972. Hannie Caulder is also a revenge western and it also dealt with the consequences for a woman of becoming a killer. Hannie Caulder is a much more successful and thought-provoking movie than The Quick and the Dead and in my view Raquel Welch’s performance is slightly more impressive than Sharon Stone’s. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Stone’s performance but Welch was absolutely superb in Hannie Caulder.

It’s interesting that in the same year this big-budget major-studio Girls With Guns western was made another Girls With Guns western appeared, Jim Wynorski’s ultra low budget Hard Bounty. Hard Bounty has its problems as well but it’s more interesting and more fun than The Quick and the Dead.

This movie is by no means a total loss. The climactic showdowns, when we finally get to them, are tense and well-staged with a few surprises. The Quick and the Dead is worth a look but don’t set your expectations too high.

Hard Bounty (1995)

Hard Bounty is a 1995 exploitation western directed by Jim Wynorski. I have recently watched three Jim Wynorski movies (Deathstalker II, Sorceress and Not of This Earth) and I’d been pleasantly surprised by all of them.

I’m not sure why I was surprised. Wynorski worked for Roger Corman (a man for who he still has enormous respect). He learnt the Corman approach to film-making. Throw in as many of the requisite exploitation elements as you can, stick rigidly to a limited budget and shooting schedule and make your movie as entertaining as possible. And if you want the formula to work then your movie has to be well-crafted. It has to look as slick and professional as possible within the limitations of a minuscule budget.

Wynorski learnt his lessons well. Deathstalker II, Sorceress and Not of This Earth are cheap but hugely entertaining.

Which brings us to Hard Bounty, which is not quite what I expected. In 1995 it looked like there was going to be something of a western revival. George P. Cosmatos’s Tombstone and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven did well commercially and it was generally expected that Sam Raimi’s upcoming The Quick and the Dead, with Sharon Stone’s star power behind it, would clean up at the box office. Making movies about lady gunfighters seemed like a obviously smart thing to do.

Alas The Quick and the Dead turned out to be dead on arrival at the box office and the western revival fizzled out very quickly.

Which brings us back to Hard Bounty. It seemed like a surefire winner. A western featuring whores-turned-gunfighters and lots of boobs - what’s not to love? The problem is that Hard Bounty doesn’t seem to be quite sure what it’s trying to do. At times it looks like it’s going to be the usual Jim Wynorski formula. It opens with a very good action gunfight sequence and then the scene shifts to the local whorehouse where we get some laughs, some glamorous ladies and some boobs. This is clearly going to be a Wynorski romp.

But it doesn’t turn out that way. The movie suddenly turns dark and serious. And it slows right down. We get some classic western themes - revenge, a crooked mining company trying to take over the town, a miscarriage of justice and a tortured bounty hunter. The bounty hunter is Kanning (Matt McCoy). He’s not a conscienceless killer but his conscience has never bothered him because he has absolute faith in the criminal justice system. If a man has had a price put on his head then he’s certainly guilty and in any case Kanning usually brings in his men alive. They’ll get a fair trial. No problem.

But suddenly being a bounty hunter becomes a major moral problem for Kanning when he discovers that sometimes the system is wrong and sometimes an innocent man can have a price on his head and sometimes a bounty hunter has to live with the knowledge that he’s been responsible for the death of an innocent man.

And eventually we know there’s going to be a showdown with Carver, a former lawman gone bad who works as enforcer for the crooked mining company.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. These are the ingredients for a potentially fine western. But these are pretty serious themes. Not exactly the stuff of a lighthearted sexy romp.

And Karen Kelly’s screenplay is rather on the slow side. There’s not quite enough action and not enough sexiness.

On the other hand the action scenes that are there are very well staged.

On the T&A side this movie is quite tame. The sex scenes are very very tame and there’s really not a huge amount of nudity. There’s no frontal nudity at all. Basically just some topless scenes.

The most amusing thing connected with this movie is the IMDb reviewer who criticised it on the grounds that women didn’t really dress like this in the Wild West. This is a Jim Wynorski film. It would be like complaining about a fantasy movie on the grounds that the dragons don’t look like real dragons. This is pure fantasy stuff and the fact that the girls look like they’re about to take part in a cowgirl-themed burlesque routine is clearly deliberate and it reminds us not to take this movie too seriously.

Stylistically it has a definite spaghetti western vibe, which is fine, and considering the low budget Wynorski gives us a fairly handsome film. There are some nicely atmospheric shots. Wynorski, like his mentor Corman, knew how to make a movie look good while spending next to nothing.

The acting is pretty good. Matt McCoy pushes the taciturn western anti-hero thing about as far as it will go. I don’t think he changes his expression once during the entire movie. And that’s exactly how the part needed to be played. John Terlesky as Carver is a fine merciless villain we can enjoy hating. The actresses who play the town’s four whores (later to become gunslingers) are all quite solid. Kelly LeBrock is an effective leading lady. She gets good support particularly from Wynorski regular Rochelle Swanson and from Kimberley Kelley.

Hard Bounty is an oddity, at times grittily realistic and at times wildly unrealistic. It’s enjoyable but the pacing is a definite problem. Worth a look.

The Region 1 DVD is acceptable if not great and presents the movie in its correct 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Breakheart Pass (1975)

Breakheart Pass is an interesting attempt to do something different in the western genre. It’s a murder mystery/thriller in a western setting and it works rather well. It’s also a train thriller and there’s nothing I like better than a mystery thriller set on a train. In this case it’s a very cool 19th century Wild West steam train so it’s even better.

At the time the movie was released (1975) Alistair MacLean was still the hottest thriller writer around. In this instance he wrote the screenplay himself from his own novel. Most of MacLean’s books ended up being filmed and remarkably enough almost all the film adaptations are worth seeing.

In 1975 Charles Bronson was also a very big star so this is quite a big budget movie, and the money was well spent.

The plot is the sort of thing MacLean dearly loved - take a group of people, put them in an isolated place and put a murderer amongst them. Preferably in a place with lots of snow and ice. MacLean loved these kinds of settings and he knew how to derive the full benefit from them. The protagonists are not only faced with danger from within but must also struggle to survive in a harsh and unforgiving environment where nature will kill you just as readily as the murderer will. It’s the kind of setting used to great effect in MacLean novels like Night Without End and MacLean movie adaptations like Where Eagles Dare, Bear Island and Ice Station Zebra.

Breakheart Pass really is a train adventure movie. Virtually the entire movie takes place on the train. The train is a US Army on route to remote Fort Humboldt with urgent medical supplies. The fort is being ravaged by a diphtheria epidemic. On board the train is Governor Richard Fairchild (Richard Crenna), his girlfriend Marica (Jill Ireland), Dr Molyneux (David Huddleston), a clergyman and a detachment of soldiers under Major Claremont (Ed Lauter). When the train stops at a frontier outpost to take on water it acquires two more passengers. US Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) has just taken escaped murderer John Deakin (Charles Bronson) into custody and intends to take him to Fort Humboldt.

It doesn’t take long before the passengers make the unpleasant discovery that there is a murderer aboard the train. You might think Deakin would be the prime suspect but in fact he’s one of the few people on the train who cannot possibly be the killer - he has an alibi for the first murder. Deakin also becomes rather important when Dr Molyneux is removed from the scene - Deakin is a doctor himself and he’s now their only doctor and thus the only hope for the beleaguered garrison of Fort Humboldt.

There will be further murders. There’s not much anybody can do about it. They can’t turn back - they’re on an emergency medical mission. They can’t make contact with the outside world since the telegraph lines are mysteriously down. There are no towns at all out here. They just have to keep going until they reach the fort. And this is an Alistair MacLean  world of snow and ice - anybody who leaves the train could not survive.

It’s a fine premise for a mystery thriller and it’s expertly executed by director Tom Gries with some excellent action set-pieces. A major bonus is Lucien Ballard’s glorious cinematography. The train itself looks wonderful and the scenery is spectacular. Nothing looks better than a Wild West steam train crossing a gorge spanned by a trestle bridge and as luck would have it there seem to be an amazing number of such gorges on the route to Fort Humboldt.

Bronson is in splendid form as the enigmatic Deakin. Bronson has the required tough guy charisma in spades and he has the subtlety to pull off this role - he never overplays but it’s always obvious that there is a lot more to this character than meets the eye. He gets solid support from the rest of the cast but this is Bronson’s film and he dominates it from start to finish.

Don’t bother looking too hard for messages or social comment or hidden meanings in this movie - Alistair MacLean’s success was based on his ability to deliver finely crafted pure entertainment and that’s what this movie provides. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The old MGM DVD (the one I watched) provides a pretty satisfactory anamorphic transfer. There’s now a Blu-Ray release and keen western fans (and Bronson fans) will probably want to go for that.

Breakheart Pass is a hugely enjoyable mix of action, adventure, suspense and mystery. It has Charles Bronson in fine form. It looks magnificent. What’s not to like? Highly recommended.

Bandolero! (1968)

In 1968 the western was a genre in a state of transition. In Hollywood the classic western was about to give way to the revisionist western (a tedious sub-genre and ultimately rather pointless since John Ford had been making revisionist westerns like Fort Apache since the late 1940s). The spaghetti western seemed like it might breathe new life into the genre although the spaghetti western itself would quickly become an overly politicised dead end. 

Bandolero! shows a certain degree of spaghetti western influence and also in some ways anticipates the revisionist western but without the pretentiousness.

Bandolero! belongs to a different sub-genre, the quirky offbeat western. It’s never quite sure how seriously it wants to take itself. It would make rather a good double feature with a movie like Shalako.

Bandolero! was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, arguably the best action movie  director of his era (with terrific movies like The Wild Geese and ffolkes to his credit), and it boasts an interesting cast headlined by James Stewart, Dean Martin and Raquel Welch.

The movie hits the ground running with a bank robbery that goes spectacularly wrong. Dee Bishop (Dean Martin) and his gang are soon behind bars and are awaiting the arrival of a traveling hangman. The hangman arrives but he’s not what he seems to be and Dee and his cronies have cheated death, not for the first time.

Sheriff July Johnson (George Kennedy) does not take kindly to seeing outlaws escaping from under his nose and he vows to pursue them even if his pursuit takes him into neighbouring Mexico. In fact he is determined to continue the pursuit indefinitely. This might sound like the sheriff is a dedicated if somewhat obsessed lawman but that’s only part of the truth. The main reason for his relentless pursuit is that Dee Bishop has taken wealthy Mexican widow Maria Stoner (Raquel Welch) as a hostage. And the sheriff is suffering from a severe case on unrequited love as far as the Widow Stoner is concerned.

Playing a rather ambiguous part in these events is Dee Bishop’s brother Mace (James Stewart). Mace is the sensible, law-abiding older brother. At least that’s what everyone always assumed. It turns out Mace is a bit more complicated than people thought.

The chase into Mexico takes both pursuers and pursued deep into bandit country. And these are bandits who enjoy killing gringos even more than they enjoy killing the locals. Both Dee’s gang and Sheriff Johnson and his posse will soon have their hands full.

Dean Martin spent of his film career either just going through the motions or gleefully sending himself up (as he does in the wonderful Matt Helm movies like The Wrecking Crew). On the rare occasions when he actually took a rôle seriously he delivered some unexpectedly fine performances, none finer than his turn as the reformed alcoholic sheriff’s deputy in Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo. He takes his rôle in Bandolero fairly seriously. It offers him the opportunity to display some emotional depth while at the same time having some tongue-in-cheek fun.

James Stewart made something of a specialty of complicated western heroes and Bandolero! allows him to be complicated whilst also indulging himself in a bit of fun. The movie does not make too many demands on Raquel Welch’s acting abilities and she does a more than competent job. 

Andrew V. McLaglen was an exceptionally good action director and he pulls off some fairly impressive visual set-pieces. McLaglen always understood the importance of pacing and he keeps things moving in a very satisfactory manner.

This movie’s biggest problem is its tone. At times it seems to want to be dark and edgy and at other times it want to be light-hearted and witty and tongue-in-cheek. It’s at its best when it’s being gently amusing. Sadly the nihilism and cynicism that were eating away at the vitals of American cinema like a cancer manage to push this movie too much into pointless despair territory.

Notwithstanding this unfortunate circumstance Bandolero! still has much to recommend it. It’s fast-paced and stylish, it boasts some impressive location shooting, it’s well-acted and the action sequences work well.  

Bandolero! is included in the Raquel Welch Collection DVD boxed set. The set also includes Fathom (a fun caper movie), The Lady in Cement (a noirish crime thriller in which he co-stars with Frank Sinatra) and the 1966 science fiction classic Fantastic Voyage. 

The set illustrates rather well the surprising diversity of her career and all four movies are worth seeing. I highly recommend the boxed set. And despite some minor reservations Bandolero! is also recommended.

Hannie Caulder (1971)

During their very brief existence Tigon British Films were responsible for some of the very best gothic horror films ever made, including Witchfinder-General and Blood on Satan's Claw. In 1971 they decided to try their hands at what was in effect a British spaghetti western. I guess you could call it a bangers-and-mash western. The movie was Hannie Caulder and it’s definitely worth a look.

Spaghetti westerns tended to focus rather heavily on the revenge theme. The twist in Hannie Caulder is that it’s not about a man seeking revenge when his wife and children get murdered, it’s about a woman doing the same thing. Three rather incompetent but very violent bandits, the Clemens brothers, on the run after a bungled bank robbery, kill Hannie Caulder’s husband and rape her. Now Hannie (Raquel Welch) intends to hunt them down and kill them.

The plan starts to take shape in her mind after a chance encounter with bounty hunter Thomas Luther Price (Robert Culp). As bounty hunters go he’s a fairly nice guy. He’s the kind of bounty hunter you could take home to meet Mother. Well, sort of. Hannie tries to persuade him to teach her to be a killer. At first he refuses, mainly because he really doesn’t want to see her get hurt. When he discovers what actually happened to her he changes his mind. He realises it’s something she has to do, and he intends to make sure she’s equipped to do it successfully.

The bulk of the film is taken up by Hannie’s training. Price gets his gunsmith friend Bailey (Christopher Lee) to make custom-made guns for her. Then she’s ready for the showdown.

The plot is one that became more or less standard for 1970s rape revenge movies, such as Bo Arne Vibenius’s stylish 1974 Thriller: A Cruel Picture. Hannie Caulder does have some claims to being the first representative of this genre.

Director Burt Kennedy handles the action sequences very satisfactorily. The fight scenes are not especially gory but they’re undeniably effective.

Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin play the Clemens brothers, and they play them partly for laughs but they’re still vicious hoodlums and Borgnine in particular is genuinely menacing. Look out for Diana Dors in a minor supporting role.

More problematic is the casting of Robert Culp as Thomas Luther Price. He’s mostly quite good but he has some trouble convincing me he’s really the kind of guy who kills men in cold blood for money. On the other hand he does make a change from excessively macho western heroes and it is interesting to see a bounty hunter portrayed so sympathetically. He’s really a guy with strong moral principles, and killing bad guys is after all performing a community service. He comes across as being more like a freelance cop than a mere killer.

Of course a movie like this ultimately will stand or fall on the performance of the lead actress. She has to be able to convince us she really could take on hardened bad guys in a gunfight and win and at the same time she has to retain our sympathies. Raquel Welch is more than equal to the challenge. Apart from the superb Kansas City Bomber this is perhaps her finest straight dramatic role.

What makes it interesting is that she has difficulty in becoming a perfect killing machine. She becomes an expert gunfighter certainly but she really doesn’t like killing. She kills because she feels compelled to do so but she has to force herself to overcome her squeamishness. She retains a certain vulnerability but she has the strength of character to carry out her task anyway.This makes her a more convincing heroine than the protagonists in most similar movies. At the risk of sounding incredibly old-fashioned she remains a woman, and when she kills she has to convince herself that it’s absolutely necessary.

This movie’s sexual politics are more complex than you find in the average rape-revenge movie. There’s no simplistic assumption that all men are violent thugs. This type of movie can all too easily descend into a depressing and hopeless nihilism, leaving the viewer feeling that the world is a cesspool and there is little than can be done to change it. Hannie Caulder avoids this pitfall. We’re left not only with some hope for the world, but with some hope for Hannie as well. She has not lost all faith in human beings and she has not lost her own humanity.

While rape revenge movies are often justified as being empowering for women they rarely feel that way. This one actually does.

Umbrella’s Region 4 release is in the correct Cinemascope aspect ratio and looks extremely good.

Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937)

The DVD cover art might suggest that Riders of the Whistling Skull is going to be just another 1930s B-western, but in fact it’s an odd and quite interesting little hybrid film and worthy of note for cult movie fans.

Sure it has cowboys, and Indians. But it also has a hint of the supernatural, a lost city, an ancient Indian curse, an evil cult, a murder mystery, mummies, a whistling skull, a cliff face in the form of a gigantic skull, a ventriloquist and archaeologists. And it gets bonus points for having the archaeologists wearing pith helmets.

The Three Mesquiteers (Tucson Smith, Lullaby Joslin and Stony Brooke) were apparently the heroes of a large number of B-westerns made by Republic in the 30s. They’re ranchers but they’re always up for adventure and doing good deeds. So when pretty young female archaeologist Betty Marsh turns up and announces that her archaeologist father Professor Marsh has failed to return from his latest expedition they tag along with the rescue expedition.

Professor Marsh had been searching for the fabled lost city of Lukachuke. There’s a treasure connected with the lost city, which leads to the suspicion that there may have been foul play. His colleague Professor Flaxon turns up but is mysteriously murdered after someone douses the lights. One of the Three Mesquiteers happens to be an avid reader of detective pulp magazines and he is convinced that the murderer was a member of the expedition.

From this point on it’s non-stop action as the expedition has to fend off attacks from a secret Indian cult and find the lost city whilst trying to discover the identity of the murderer among them. There’s some pretty reasonable stunt work, director Mack V. Wright does a competent job and there’s some nice location shooting.

The acting is very much B-movie stuff, which adds to the charm of the movie. Ray “Crash” Corrigan plays Tucson Smith. Corrigan was the star of countless low-budget westerns as well as serials such as the delightfully silly Undersea Kingdom. He couldn’t act but he was athletic and good-looking and could ride a horse and that was enough in those halcyon days. The Three Mesquiteers are all brave and pure of heart but without being irritating about it.

It’s all very politically incorrect of course. But it’s good-natured fun and it’s mercifully free from intrusive and annoying comic relief. The whole thing was evidently sufficiently light-hearted not to be deemed to require additional comic relief.

The plot is as goofy and as unlikely as could possibly be desired. The supernatural elements don’t add up to very much but even a suggestion of the supernatural in a western is unusual enough.

This is a movie that cheerfully ignores genre conventions, or rather it combines genre conventions from half a dozen genres and throws them all into one crazy cocktail. And a delightful cocktail it is. This movie is just pure fun.

The Alpha Video DVD release is standard Alpha Video quality. In other words it’s very rough but watchable. It’s such a strange little film that I have no hesitation in recommending it.