Well I’ll be jiggered! That one was a western!...Okay, fine, all of the Three Mesquiteer movies are westerns, technically, but Range Defenders comes across like a serious western, exploring real issues of pioneer lawlessness, of good versus bad. Tonally, of course, it’s in the same ballpark as the rest of its franchise (plenty of help there from inexplicable comic relief Lullaby). Still, it has a plot that makes sense, and could easily be reapplied to an A-western. Of course, we also have all those wonderful Yakima Canutt western stunts which are a B-western’s bread and butter, which would be a mighty tough thing to trade out.
Stony’s brother George (Thomas Carr) has come to visit. Already, man’s unnecessary violence towards his fellow man is highlighted, as George immediately gets into a life-or-death showdown with Tucson Smith (Ray Corrigan) for no conceivably good reason. This is only broken up by brother Stony Brooke (Robert Livingston), with the aid of Lullaby Joslin (Max Terhune). All of those men but for George are our series regulars, the Mesquiteers, to reiterate a point I have grown somewhat tired of.
Now we learn the reason for George’s arrival. He is wanted for murder in his home town of Green Valley. Despite what we’ve just seen, George insists he is innocent, hiding out due to a miscarriage of justice. He cannot get a fair trial in Green Valley, on account of Sheriff Dan Gray (Earle Hodgins) is in the pockets of local sheep monopolist John Harvey (Harry Woods), the man George suspects of framing him. (He’s on the lam from a lamb man!) Furthermore, the Brooke brothers’ (gee, that sounds like a clothing store) homestead, the Lazy K Ranch, is being put on auction by this same Harvey, in a bid to draw George out.
Naturally, wherever there is injustice, the Mesquiteers will be there – okay, the franchise never posits such an altruistic notion, but it’s nice to think it. While George hides out in a cave like a common Platonic metaphor, the Mesquiteers ride into Green Valley to disrupt the auction going on in the Bonanza Café. This duty falls mostly to Lullaby, a voice-throwing ventriloquist. As he proceeds to throw the bidding into a tizzy, like Cary Grant in North by Northwest, two clear cut town factions become apparent: There are Harvey’s men, who blindly follow him just like the sheep his fortune is built upon. Opposite them are the cattle ranchers, now being portrayed as wholly good, after so many Mesquiteer entries vilifying cattlemen on principle.
Any time you have a mass of angry men together in this franchise (or, really, in general), fistfights are bound to break out. Just like the time I suicidally wore Dodgers gear up to Wrigleyville when the Cubs lost to L.A., violence is unavoidable. This is something every Mesquiteer movie must have, and these scenes are increasingly being played for laughs. Consider, minus the symbolism being, er, rammed home, how Lullaby acquires a sheep’s head to head-butt the shepherd’s butts. I actually find the premise of a lawman bought and paid for an interesting one, and sadly The Three Mesquiteers’ own generic compulsions prevent it from playing out to its full.
Fight over, Stony reveals himself to Harvey, and the auction is off. Stony takes control of the Lazy K, and even sees to it that Harvey’s flocks are shooed from the premises. Old ranch hand Pete (who’s busy building a house straight out of Unforgiven) spells out for us the entire range war scenario, how Harvey is strong-arming the cattlemen with Sheriff Gray’s backing. Tucson here plays the idealist, much like Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and proposes he run against Sheriff Gray in the upcoming election (Tucson has sheriff experience – see Hit the Saddle, when he himself abused such a position). This shall be our central conflict: the Mesquiteers seeking legal, political means of justice. Harvey’s gotten the cattlemen’s beef, and they will steer clear of kowtowing to any more bull!
Meanwhile, Lullaby, ever the furry, seeks more oddball comic distractions as he purposelessly gets a sheep’s goat. Thus the ram rams him.
While Tucson is off courting the electorate, and Lullaby is making like the ancient Greeks, Stony has himself another of his textbook romances. But even in this formulaic element, Range Defenders finds ways to make it dramatically compelling! Today’s Bond girl is Sylvia Ashton (Eleanor Stewart, yet another Mesquiteer female lead to have no other roles ever), the daughter of the man George supposedly murdered. She’s also deep in Harvey’s proverbial pockets. This will but a serious thorn in the relationship once she learns Stony’s identity, leaving him feeling sheepish.
Tucson is successful in getting herds of ranchers to flock to his anti-sheep rally. But any serious attempts at public discourse are quickly stymied by corrupt Sheriff Gray. Tucson challenges Gray to a civic debate, then punches his teeth out – Ah, the subtleties of politics!
Lullaby also joins in on this high-falutin’ Socratic dialogue, by means of – Okay, I feel I am morally required to warn you from now on…Lullaby produces Elmer the dummy, one of the most terrifying things in human history.
I warn you because every time Elmer’s hideous visage shows up, I fall under the doll’s Satanic power, and am helplessly compelled to include him in a screen shot – so the beastly puppet’s reign of Eldritch horrors can perpetuate.
So this is a warning – There is an image of Elmer below.
Just turn back now if you haven’t the stomach for it.
Okay, you were warned…
[Shiver!] That creature has been haunting my nightmares lately!
Back to business: Tucson’s popularity growing heedlessly, Gray resorts to more overtly vicious tactics. His henchmen ambush the Mesquiteers while they’re out riding the wasteland together aimlessly, as they do half a dozen times per entry. At gunpoint, Tucson is forced to sign a document signaling his withdrawal from the race. Rather, Tucson spurts ink all over the henchmen. The Mesquiteers, unarmed and even horseless, clamber through the rock formations to evade their would-be tormentors. Coming upon a cliff overlooking a river, they proceed for the series’ second time (the first being Roarin’ Lead) to pull a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – that is, they cliff dive. It must’ve been a Yakima special. (Psst – they’re the three dark spots in the image’s upper left.)
Lullaby’s shenanigans proceed to drag this entire movie down with them. This time, he throws his voice so that a parrot can express his favor for candidate Tucson. This is only noteworthy for the totally bizarre thing that happens next – a bad guy blows the parrot away at point blank with his six-shooter! (I must note, it was a fake parrot.)
Harvey decides to step up his game. He learns of where George is hiding, and sends his goons to fetch him. In a nicely meta moment, George mistakes them for the good guys because Harvey had them switch from black hats to white hat. Uh oh, these western villains are becoming genre savvy!
At Gray’s corrupt insistence, a trial for George will be forgone, as they rather go straight for the hangin’. This draws Stony into town, to attempt a rather desperate rescue. All this accomplishes is Stony’s imprisonment alongside his brother. And since Sylvia has now overheard Harvey openly confessing to her father’s murder, she’ll have to be locked away too – into a locked office room with her!
Harvey is an interesting baddie (for a B-western), and I think genuinely he would’ve just straight away murdered these three – if not for one thing. It’s election day now, and Tucson has organized the ranchers to vote in droves. This goes against Gray’s own civic policies of voter fraud. There’s only one option left: physically seal off entrance to Green Valley, and hold the town to martial law.
The violence has nicely escalated in this entry, as all vestiges of civility slowly seep away. It concludes with all-out warfare, on a scale unseen in all other Mesquiteers, the cattlemen on the outside laying revolutionary siege to the entrenched (politically and literally) shepherds inside. Seriously, put this notion in the hands of a Sam Peckinpah instead hack Mack V. Wright, and you’d have a classically vicious western finale!
As Lullaby plays Patton against the mutton menace, Tucson sneaks behind enemy lines to rescue Stony. Here, Tucson has his final victorious scuffle against Gray. Harvey tries to escape altogether, except Stony blows him (and his horse) up with freaking TNT! This in turn explodes all remaining henchmen. Even in 1937, action movies knew you could solve everything with explosions!
The film’s final gag seeks to undermine much of what Range Defenders did well. Basically, Lullaby has another wooly romantic liaison with his sheeply paramour. Ewe! Also, ew!
Range Defenders has good action, an emotional through line, and a genuine and engaging conflict concerning Old West corruption. I’m pretty tempted to call this far and away the best entry in this series. Only Riders of the Whistling Skull gives it any competition, though that film works from the perspective of a pulpy, Indiana Jones adventure story. Range Defenders feels more like Unforgiven, were it a B-western from half a century prior. Efforts to wrest control away from ruthless interests must descend into violence. This is a dramatic conflict far above the Mesquiteers’ usual concerns with grotesque animal jokes and narrative incoherence.
Achieving such striking success eight entries in is something only B-movie programmers from this era can do. Then, a series could get off the ground with the assumption that it could and would improve – again, film franchises of the 30s follow the pattern of television programs, which rarely peak in episode one. Yet for all my gushing, the overall level of quality is never huge, even when a series is delivering at the top of its capacity. The dichotomy between A and B-pictures determines a lesser treatment, by definition. But imagine what the story of Range Defenders could yield under the hands of a Clint Eastwood. The central notion here is solid; it simply needs a mightier venue than The Three Mesquiteers to realize it fully.
Related posts:
• No. 1 The Three Mesquiteers (1936)
• No. 3 Roarin’ Lead (1936)
• No. 4 Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937)
• No. 5 Hit the Saddle (1937)
• No. 6 Gunsmoke Ranch (1937)
• No. 7 Come On, Cowboys! (1937)
• No. 9 Heart of the Rockies (1937)
• No. 10 The Trigger Trio (1937)
• No. 13 Call of the Mesquiteers (1938)
• No. 14 Outlaws of Sonora (1938)
• No. 19 Santa Fe Stampede (1938)
• Nos. 29 – 38 (1940 – 1941)
• No. 35 Prairie Pioneers (1941)
• Nos. 39 – 51 (1941 – 1943)
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