SADDLE MOUNTAIN ROUNDUP (1941) stars Ray "Crash" Corrigan, John "Dusty" King and Max "Alibi" Terhune as the Range Busters, a trio of cowboys bringing truth, justice and well-pressed shirts to a wild, lawless and crumpled west.
The Range Busters were the brainchild of Corrigan, who had starred alongside Terhune as two of the Three Mesquiteers, the original 'trigger trio' and a hugely successful Republic Pictures series dating from September 1936 onwards. Corrigan and Terhune left Republic in 1939 over salary issues and came together with producer George Weeks and Monogram Pictures to bring no fewer than twenty-four Range Busters movies to the screen between the summer of 1940 and the fall of 1943. That's one film every fifty days. I mean, how good a movie can you really make in fifty days? (Answers in a comment please.)
Of course, it would be churlish to make a twenty-first century critique of SADDLE MOUNTAIN ROUNDUP, but that's precisely what I'm going to do. It's awful. It's an awful film in 2007, and it was an awful film sixty-five years ago. It may have seemed less awful in the context of a world preoccupied with the beginnings of the second world war, but it wasn't. Not when you consider that it's theatrical release was preceded, but a matter of weeks, by that of Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE; that it has the narrative complexity of an early episode of Scooby Doo; that one of the film's least wooden performances comes from a wise-cracking ventriloquist's dummy called Elmer Sneezeweed.
Like KANE, ROUNDUP centres upon a world-weary old man whose wealth and influence has brought him only worry, misfortune, and, ultimately, a sad and pathetic demise. The figure in question is not an eccentric media magnate in the mould of William Randolph Hearst or Howard Hughes, but Magpie Harper, a geriatric rancher who dies at the hands of a money-grabbing killer known as The Raven. The Range Busters soon arrive to solve the mystery of Harper's death, bring his murderer to justice, and make safe the prospects of his highly eligible young dependent Nancy, not to mention those of Fang Way, Harper's bewildered Chinese manservant.
Nothing in the basic storyline of SADDLE MOUNTAIN ROUNDUP strays into the undergrowth of unpredictability. The film's sublime moments tend to revolve morearound "Dusty" King's musical numbers - he finds time to sing such classics as The Doggone Doggie Got Away and That Little Green Valley of Mine - and the presence of Max "Alibi" Terhune's saddle-bag sidekick, Elmer Sneezeweed.
Max and Elmer's partnership originated from the early thirties, when vaudeville performer Terhune became master of ceremonies of radio's WLS Barn Dance. When Republic Pictures expressed an interest in having Terhune star in one of their earlier westerns he made it a condition of his involvement that Elmer would star with him. Republic, showing what must have seemed to Max like a prosaic fixation with reality, questioned whether or not ventriloquism had in fact existed in the wild west. Terhune in turn, showing a visionary appreciation of the fact that people - audiences and studios alike - will swallow anything if it suits them to do so. He convinced the production execs at Republic not only that ventriloquism was very much a reality in the formative years of modern America, but that it would not seem utterly ludicrous for a hard-talking, gun-toting, cattle-steering vigilante to have a little talking timber chum riding side saddle.
So it is that we are treated to some unlikely moments in the rich tapestry of cinematic history. At one point during a chase on horseback, with the thunderous piano crescendo rising ever higher in the background, Elmer's hair is shot off. Later, shortly after the Raven is unmasked - yes, it's Magpie Harper's scheming lawyer Dan Freeman, and he would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky Range Busters - Elmer, to use the parlance of the time, 'gets the girl'. We are left to imagine the anticlimax she experiences upon discovering the her new beau is but a wooden dummy, with a clothes peg for a cock. It is probably much the same sense of anticlimax as that with which the credits of SADDLE MOUNTAIN ROUNDUP roll, and that with which this review ends.
3 comments:
It would have been less of a crushing blow had Fang Way got the girl in the terribly ugly dress, in the end. My soul is still scarred from that film.
By the way, B-Movie Night was cancelled for the grand reopening of Le Jardin last night. We're open! Steelhead loves us! For whatever reason...we had a great, GREAT time!
Though I will never master Greedy Greedy, I fear.
I'm impressed that you actually went through the effort to research the origin of this waste of celluloid! The purpose of showing the film was to make fun of it's horribleness in the tradition of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The official name of meQal's event is Caption This! Live.
The original Caption This! was a section of the SciFi Channel's website where Dominion members could post witty remarks to a screengrab of whatever was showing on SFC at the moment, and the picture would (when it worked properly) refresh every 90 seconds or so. The community that formed around this form of interactive entertainment (the Cappers) now have our own websites to caption screengrabs.
The Cappers of Second Life group is made up of those Cappers, like meQal and myself, who found their way to SL and use it as a new medium for our special brand of sarcastic wit.
Is THAT where that comes from? Man, I dimly remember that from the early days of Sci-Fi Channel...that was back when they had the little Dominion News inserts, wasn't it?
Man. Takes me back to the insane con days. That's eerie. :)
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