First, the traditional “Range Busters I didn’t watch rundown.”
Boot Hill Bandits (1942) – Bandits are holding up – zzzzzzzzz! Sorry, but every entry is about bandits holding up this or that. (It allows for the same stunts and sets every time.) As something this franchise calls “variation,” this time it’s a mine payroll – as opposed to rancher payrolls or gold shipments. In the trademark “one interesting thing we come up with per entry,” Crash is mistaken for dead early on. Otherwise, I picture it’s just like every other entry.
Texas Trouble Shooters (1942) – Whenever stagecoaches aren’t being held up, a ranch is under nebulous legal attack – that’s the other series plotline. So now it’s the [pulling out my dictionary of most common American last names] Wilson Ranch, which has recently come into a fortune of [pulling out my list of valuable commodities] oil. The expected generic gang of crooks kills Old Man Wilson, and comes up with an impostor to take the place of would-be inheritor Bret Travis. Maybe it’s one o’ them doppelganger type transpirin’s, like in them Three Mesquiteer movies.
As for Arizona Stage Coach [sic], which I did see, guess by that title which Range Buster stock plot they’re going with: Stagecoach robberies, or troubled ranch? Yup, stagecoach robberies it is! So, cutting to the chase, the Range Busters (Ray “Crash” Corrigan, John “Dusty” King and Max “Alibi” Terhune, all as themselves) are called in to put a stop to these daring, uninspiring robberies. Daylight robberies, presumably, though these films never quite distinguish time of day too well.
As always, there isn’t one iota of content here that can fill out a deathly hour of film, so we gotta start wastin’ time early. How ‘bout Dusty sings a song? And because, every few entries, they try forcing in some “variation,” Dusty shall sing this song upside down. That sort of makes up for the musical abortion he commits – I cannot even figure out this tune’s title. Of course, Dusty is as motionless as ever whilst singin’, ‘cause only Gene Kelly could figure out how to dance upside down.
Anyway, the request is put in for the Range Busters, non-deputized civilians that they are, to stop the stagecoach robbers – a Sheriff does exist, but as always is depicted as being, well, a little lazy. Standard pretty girl Dorrie Willard (Nell O’Day) makes this request, based on the Busters’ reputation, which should also tell her one more thing: Crash and Dusty are going to woo her in a love triangle, then both ditch her once the story is over. Right?...Right?
Well…yes and no. There is still something of a romancin’ takin’ place, but it ain’t the focus it’s previously been – methinks Rock River Renegades and Thunder River Feud rather dried up the “love triangle” side of the formula a bit. Really, all that nonsense is simply relegated to the epilogue, ‘cause they’ve got…well, different fish to fry.
Really, the big changeup in Arizona Stage Coach comes from…well, from reusing a plot twist I recall from Rock River Renegades (who knows if the intermittent films employed a similar tact). That twist is…it is…is…Frankly, I barely remember that movie! I do remember thinking of this connection while watching Arizona Stage Coach though, so it must exist. Still, there’s the usual mess of innocent men being framed for robbery, and lynch mobs being aroused to mete out frontier justice to the wrong people (idiots that Range Buster townsfolk always are). The one new “variation” Arizona Stage Coach throws into the mix is…it is…is…Well, golly boy howdy, I plum barely remember this movie!
So…uh…um…There’s a villain! Tim Douglas (Charles King), he is, a villain purely by evidence of his mustache and his role as a businessman – These films stereotype worse than political smear ads. Oddly, when the Range Busters do figure out Tim is the baddie (around halfway through, as per formula, because the main baddie is always seemingly respectable), there isn’t even a big deal of it. It’s assumed the audience will peg him as a villain instantly, by the vague description I just gave, as well as by his relative cast billing.
Tim’s scheme, for what it’s worth, involves his position as the head of the local Bumblefuck Town Wells Fargo. That way, he is able to tell both the robbers and stagecoach driver when and where the next robbery shall be. See, the driver’s in on it too. Actually, like 90% of the town is in on it, to gauge by the ridiculously vast number of henchmen we see. But the mooks never have the same sort of standing as other characters, so citizen-wise they aren’t people – simply obstacles for the Range Busters to overcome.
All this is so very generic, my notes wind up describing events like “Someone goes to someplace and does something.” There are creeping hints that my ennui re: The Range Busters is a franchise-wide problem, exacerbated by inherent problems with how these films were made. See, as noted in former write-ups, all The Range Buster movies were filmed at Corrigan’s Corriganville ranch, in the Los Angeles mountains – these mountains themselves are becoming problematic for my viewing pleasure, since that’s where I once worked – as a firefighter. In the four or so variation-free standard horse chases Arizona Stage Coach vomits our way, every single one takes place on the exact same fire road – it’s clearly a fire road, as the tire tracks are plainly visible (though this entry manages keep power lines from appearing in the background). I even think I worked on those fire roads.
But my challenge with the mountains is a personal problem, the sort of odd issue all residents of L.A. must deal with, movie-wise. No, the overuse of the Corriganville set is what I really want to address. For a place that was conceived as an all-purpose movie set (and later pre-Disneyland theme park – Yeah right!), Corriganville is surprisingly lacking in variation – it’s like the physical manifestation of these films themselves! Let me see if I can work out all the potential sets available:
- The horse corral. Usually used to represent a ranch, even more usually the Range Busters’. That today it’s the villains’ ranch, that just confuses matters.
- The saloon. A good place for fights and exposition. Also, where mobs form.
- The sheriff’s office. There’s a cell in the back, and an office desk. Move those things around, and you have a readymade bank set (or other interior) as needed.
- The Evil Shack Lair. It’s where the bad guys sit and scheme out their nefarious misdeeds. That it looks like a building most people would store their lawnmower in doesn’t help with the Bondian effect they’re going for (never mind James Bond didn’t exist yet).
- The anachronistic 1940s suburban house. White picket fence, electricity, a mail box, all these are details which distract me from whatever time period these discontinuous films opt to take place in. Usually where the Girl of the Day lives.
- Common props: the stagecoach, buckboard, some horses. With a lack for anything else capable of motion, the action scene possibilities are severely limited.
There’s not even an Old West Main Street! You’d think that essential for a ranch designed specifically for westerns! Oh well, stock footage works just as well.
Now, my problem: I’ve seen these same five places day in and day out throughout my journey through The Range Busters’ oeuvre. With plots, characterization, action, cinematography, etc. already stagnated, even the visuals are rotten. Sometimes the ranch is next door to the suburban house (as in today), sometimes it’s “miles” away. It plays hell with the sort of geographic logic most movie watchers unconsciously develop (like when a character is traveling left, they’re traveling west). The fact that director S. Roy Luby never changes camera setup doesn’t help! You could make one shack look like several, by filming it from, say, the other side. This bit of knowledge escaped The Range Busters.
Further exacerbations arise in Arizona Stage Coach. One set represents two or more settings! Take the Evil Shack Lair, for instance. Here it’s the baddies’ high-tech secret base (that’s a given). But it’s also the Range Buster’s own separate fortress of solitude! There are scenes, towards the climax, where characters ride from one shack lair to the other. It’s damnably confusing, and an example of some pretty poor filmmaking, really.
To give you an idea of how visually unvaried these films are, consider the screen caps. They’re spaced out, from all over the running time – and these are the most interesting visuals I could find! Now, the ones above are bland enough. Those that follow, though, are each separated by 15 or 20 minutes! That the same image could get repeated so often is not a sign of layered meaning (as in, say, all the red in The Sixth Sense), but just creatively stagnant filming. Damn me it’s uninteresting!
And those last two are in the two separate shack lairs. So we see how successful that was.
You know I’ve grown fed up with a series when I descend to this sort of meta consideration.
I could say a little more about the story – I’ve barely addressed the major twists, for they pale in contrast to the surfeit of quality on hand. For what it’s worth, Dorrie’s brother Ernie gets into a shootout with one of the henchmen for stupid reasons, kills him, then rides into town with his loot for equally stupid reasons. The stupidity compounds so that Ernie is himself accused of the stagecoach robberies. (This frame job was entirely accidental, showing how oddly slanted these plots are.) Then the robbers kidnap Ernie and force him into actually being a robber, to further dig a grave that was already wide open to begin with.
The Range Busters, for their part, partake in some decent illogic in an attempt to bait the robbers. They don’t bait the stagecoach itself, as I’ve seen in about a dozen other B-westerns in the past month. Rather, they clad themselves in black (see several screen caps ago), and rob the stagecoach themselves! This is just – No, I’m not even going to touch this one!
There’s more I could say – the terrifying evolution of Elmer the doll into a genuinely sentient, autonomous being is worthy of note, but I think I’ll save that one for later. Disregarding much of the “specific” content of one Range Busters movie isn’t the end of the world, especially when the vast majority of such a recap would be damnably redundant. At least now I’ve said my fill of the general franchise problems. Perhaps this shall give me the quick energy I need to slog through the remaining innumerable entries.
Related posts:
• No. 4 Trail of the Silver Spurs (1941)
• No. 8 Fugitive Valley (1941)
• No. 9 Saddle Mountain Roundup (1941)
• No. 10 Tonto Basic Outlaws (1941)
• No. 11 Underground Rustlers (1941)
• No. 13 Rock River Renegades (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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