“Tonto Basin Outlaws, another adventure with the Range Busters.”
So goes the standard Range Buster opening, and with it the veiled threat that this series shall continue on indefinitely (or at least for fourteen more entries). These films’ opening and closing segments are routinely formulaic, and indeed augur well for the content in between. I tire of restating the series (and, indeed, genre) formula for each entry, so just accept that Tonto Basin Outlaws is indeed formulaic. But that’s not to say there isn’t the potential for unique experimentation within that formula. What we get here is just that, or at the very least the most coherent statement of series formula so far.
We open on a very unimportant misdirect. It’s suddenly 1898 (this series having no grasp on the space-time continuum). The Range Buster trio has opted to join Teddy Roosevelt’s noble Rough Riders (itself sounding like a decent “trigger trio” franchise), with the express intent of shooting Spaniards’ faces off. But they are reassigned to Wyoming, to partake in the standard Buster chicanery we always see. So what was the whole deal with the Rough Riders in the first place?
Instead, they’re assigned to Crash’s (“Crash” Corrigan) boyhood town of North Butte, to put an end to devious cattle rustling. Because these are Army cattle – reminder to self, investigate if the armed forces maintain agrarian interests, as all these B-westerns assert. Naturally, Crash’s past shall play into the plot, but let us not assume they’re making any cannon assertions about Crash’s character – the Range Busters reset button is far mightier than even that “The Simpsons” employs.
The trick is just how the Range Busters go about rustling up the cattle rustlers. Unlike The Three Mesquiteers’ films, they aren’t just going to ride into town as a single unit, using their pure power of goodness to uproot the villains. No, each Range Buster goes in separately, under a different cover story, to work the bad guys from different angles – it’s sort of a three-way Yojimbo…eh, not really. So Crash shall be playing up his boyhood angle, Dusty (“Dusty” King) shall be the not-yet-codified mysterious gunslinger type, and Alibi (“Alibi” Terhune)…well, Alibi ‘ll just be alone in a hotel, chatting with his murderous puppet, and basically sitting this one out. It’s the best use of everyone’s time.
Crash gets to reminiscing with his boyhood pal Jim Stark (Edmund Cobb), now the local black-clad, thin-mustached businessman. Yes, he’s the villain, though his past – where Crash saved him from drowning – muddies the waters to the fullest extent the B-western will allow. But subtlety can never be allowed to pass, so Stark is shown with horns in his head – there’s a profusion of mounted antlers in the background, and even under Monogram’s sloppy tutelage, I cannot imagine such an image is accidental.
Meanwhile, Dusty has used his unerring radar to sniff out the one viable love interest in North Butte. Here running the local anachronistic (even for 1941) diner is Jane Blanchard (Jan Wiley). Her blondness and coyness may mark her as the typically insipid western damsel, but there’s more to her. (Bless this film for its little achievements.) For she too has just traveled to North Butte in respond to the dire, dire cattle rustling. See, Jane is a reporter, in the Torchy Blaine mode (that is, Lois Lane), and has been charged with investigating the local hoodlumism. It must’ve been a slow news century.
The Range Busters maintain a certain devotion to lightly farcical antics, somewhat in excess of what The Three Mesquiteers provided, seeing as they cannot directly compete in the serious western action game. That means, rather than dramatize the conflict between our heroes and Stark’s rustlers, the film shall be most concerned with what transpires between Crash, Dusty and Jane. (Alibi, as stated, is off doing nothing and liking it.) Because these men are both new in town, clearly using aliases of some sort (I mean, “Dusty”?!), Jane suspects that one must be the head rustler, while the other is the government man out to capture him. And yet she fends off romantic efforts from both men, because where would a Range Busters movie be without its love triangle?
In Jane’s defense, though, she’s far more clever than her standard genre cohorts. She immediately accepts Crash’s proposal of a date, sure, but as a means to investigate him. True to her suspicions, Crash’s interest in the nearby cattle herd stock footage is wildly out of proportion with his interest in an attractive blonde in a very flattering cowgirl outfit. And soon enough Crash has abandoned his date in the middle of the wilderness (I’m led to understand that’s a dealbreaker). What she doesn’t know is he’s busy chasing off the rustler minions who’ve suddenly shown up. As she sees are several cows racing away in terror, Crash hot on their tails.
Crash’s purposes in town become evident now, seeing as he’s also saved the life of cowhand Bill Brown (Art Fowler). A dance is thrown in his honor – eh, and also partially to commemorate the Rough Riders, so there is some more vague purpose to this setting…eh, if you really need that to justify a dance. Anyway, it’s the chance for a set piece, with white people dancing up the mightiest storm they can muster. By series demand, Crash and Dusty put in a little more face-time with Jane, saying and doing things to get each other’s goat. And here Jane’s loyalties start to waver. She believes she may be wrong, that Dusty is the arch criminal, and Crash is the man out to investigate him. So Jane vows to study Dusty more carefully; she goes on a date.
We’re familiar with the Dusty brand of courtship – singing. I suspect the tune is called “The Prairie Far Below” because that is the most oft repeated lyric (and the closest thing this song has to a filthy double entendre). It mostly just lists out a bestiary of prairie critters, and connects them all back to indistinct romantic yearnings. Here again Jane grows confused about who the bad guy is (thankfully, that confusion never transfers to the audience). Since Dusty sings, he obviously cannot be a villain – in Jane’s impeccable journalistic logic, only peace officers sing. I dunno, maybe it’s a meta observation about the whole singin’ cowboy phenomenon. But when Dusty denies Jane’s forthright questions (it boils down to “Are you a mole?”), Jane goes right back to thinking Dusty is a bandit. Oh…kay.
With Jane’s rationale now falling into the realm of indecisive and incomprehensible (that is, she’s acting as most films of this era thing all women act), it’s time for her to cease being a strong and self-sufficient character, and become a standard damsel in distress. Damn it! The way they accomplish this is somewhat roundabout, since Stark and his rascals haven’t been up to a whole lot. Instead, when Dusty now sees cattle stock footage (it’s the same scene as Crash confronted), he sends Jane off to the safety of the nearest log cabin. This just happens to be the baddies’ lair, so…she may be a mere victim now, but at least it’s not really Jane’s fault.
Here plot twists start a-comin’ with a thickness I don’t wish to dwell upon. Crash again engages the cattle rustlers, and is arrested for his trouble. It’s a common genre ailment that the wrong person is always arrested. Meanwhile, the henchman Jane encountered has convinced her he’s trustworthy (I’m starting to doubt her reading on people). This means he leads her out of the shack, around the same time Dusty is captured by Stark’s men and made a prisoner. Well that’s an unexpected turn of events!
Once again gaining my confidence, Jane has a renewal of independence. She figures out the henchman’s ruse, lays him out flat (atta girl!), and races back to free Dusty from his clutches – This is really an unusual scenario, the dude in distress! Hell, even today! Of course, Dusty is the one who must fistfight the nearest varmint, which I assume is an exciting sequence, based on what the canned soundtrack does.
Also, Alibi is now trapped in a cellar. At least that (barely) justifies his uninvolvement.
Crash, the trophy of frontier justice, is brought by the townsfolk so Stark can mete out punishment – because apparently in these films, the local mustache-twirling businessman is in a bigger position of penal power than the sheriff. And the mooks leave, and Stark spares Crash’s life on account of Crash’s once saving Stark’s life. Ah, can’t you just sense that moral ambiguity? Well…Crash’s life is spared while he’s in Stark’s office. The instant he steps outside, Stark’s suddenly gigantic army of henchmen opens wild, indiscriminate fire. Thus a standard yet fun shootout erupts.
But this shootout happens to be one of the greatest I’ve seen a B-western offer up. For as Dusty nears town, riding past the “hidden” herd of rustled cattle, he comes up with a foolproof plan: Stampede those cattle straight through town! This’ll rat out those nasty baddies, and miraculously leave Crash and all innocent people unharmed.
The cattle stampede is actually really impressive. Sure, some of it might be stock footage, but someone had to film hundreds of cows demolishing an Old West set. And there’s even a scant amount of direct cow-to-man interaction in some shots, suggesting they actually did this for Tonto Basin Outlaws. I rather suspect this will be the high point of the entire series. And wouldn’t you know, among all the buildings in town, it’s Stark’s which is most susceptible to cattle collision? His offices collapse, and the bad guys are defeated!
The formula demands the denouement concern Dusty and Crash heartlessly bidding their mutual lady love farewell – our heroes must never be wrapped up in a relationship. Again, the character of Jane is almost wholly responsible for overturning that setup. It is she who turns down the Range Busters, as she’s a professional woman who is expected back at her news offices. And with her astounding exposé on “Cattle Rustlers in Wyoming: (far more newsworthy than the mere sinking of the Maine – which Hearst did blow out of proportion), Jane has a promising career ahead of her.
It’s bracing to see a series willingly break so many of its hard-and-fast rules, even if Jane may have been a less-than-original character (again, I think she’s a Torchy Blaine rip-off). But I can already assure you this won’t become a regular thing. For just as Tonto Basin Outlaws (and all Range Busters movies) opens with a promise of formula, so does it close with one:
“The End. We’ll be seeing you soon in our next picture. ‘Crash,’ ‘Dusty,’ & ‘Alibi,’ ‘The Range Busters.’”
Related posts:
• No. 4 Trail of the Silver Spurs (1941)
• No. 8 Fugitive Valley (1941)
• No. 9 Saddle Mountain Roundup (1941)
• No. 11 Underground Rustlers (1941)
• No. 13 Rock River Renegades (1942)
• No. 16 Arizona Stagecoach (1942)
• No. 17 Texas to Bataan (1942)
• No. 18 Trail Riders (1942)
• No. 20 Haunted Ranch (1943)
• No. 24 Bullets and Saddles (1943)
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