Ray “Crash” Corrigan, owner of the fabled Corriganville ranch and brainiac responsible for the mere concept of The Range Busters (after having stolen the general notion from Republic Pictures), sure must’ve been a pissy guy. He’d previously been a big western star for The Three Mesquiteers, a Republic B-series which is more or less exactly what The Range Busters is – only it was made first. It was Corrigan’s supposed monetary mistreatment at the hands of Republic’s accountants which caused him to leave the Mesquiteer stables, and then copy them directly. And his Range Buster setup sure must’ve been sweet: Not only did Corrigan own the land the films were made on, and he was the star, but he also made 50% of the series’ box office take (according to some sources…such as Ray Corrigan himself).
But apparently this still wasn’t enough for His High Majesty. Noooo, now The Range Busters weren’t paying him enough (hell, he probably wanted all the profits, not understanding that whole “collaborative” part of filmmaking). No matter, by 1942 Ray Corrigan left the series in a bitchy, drama queen huff, PO’ed over his…God, whatever Corrigan was upset about. Yeah, while American soldiers were bravely fighting the Third Reich, Ray Corrigan was leaving his own franchise over inconsequential monetary matters. Ass.
Therefore The Range Busters’ seventeenth entry, Texas to Bataan, sees the first actor shakeup. Exit Ray, enter stuntman David Sharpe. Here he plays “Davy” Sharpe, because The Range Busters were never ones for creative character names, and damned if Ray’s gonna let some upstart stuntman punk steal his valuable, valuable name. (Kind of wonderfully, Sharpe’s long career in Hollywood would cap off with Blazing Saddles, which handily roasts the Corrigan oaters.)
Therefore also, John “Dusty” King now has the top billing. It’s actually very similar to Robert Livingston’s promotion following Corrigan’s pissy abandonment of The Three Mesquiteers.
As always, in like every B-western I’ve ever seen, Max “Alibi” Terhune is billed third.
There’s also a new hack director now (for what little difference it makes), Robert Emmett Tansey. Apparently hack S. Roy Luby left with Corrigan, waiting until his star’s menstrual cycle was over. (Oh yeah, Corrigan’ll be back…four films from now.)
Texas to Bataan barely needs this exciting behind-the-scenes shakeup to give it something worth discussing – after a seemingly endless sequence of ultra-generic entries. For it’s 1942 now, the U.S. is well quagmired in WWII, and just about every serialized film character imaginable is employed fighting the Huns and Japs. Oh yeah, this is a contemporary entry (I’ve never even questioned this chronologically unbound series), struggling to find some way of connecting western tropes in with the War. (See also the Mesquiteers’ The Phantom Plainsmen.)
Okay, so we start with the Range Busters angrily desecrating caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini. (Hirohito inexplicably makes it out of this damning, soul-shattering commentary, even though the film concerns the Pacific theater – spoiler.) And, you know, cowboy hicks like the Range Busters aren’t quite an anachronism in 1942 – I mean, look at Texas today. Still, how do you keep your characters in their usual rural setting, and still have ‘em stomp the Huns and nip the Nips?
Spies! Hell, it’s always the answer, as it’s easier than filming battles. And, well, every facet of running the U.S. took on an added importance in the war years – even our self-aggrandizing nebulous cowboy trios had importance now. And if they’re herding horses and/or cows for the U.S. Army (it’s a little confused), well, enemy spies could always try fluoridating our eatin’ horses!
The Busters work on the Conroy Ranch with the usual father/daughter team – the female half, Dallas (Marjorie Manners), is the love interest. This means at some point the story will be put on hold for 5 whole minutes so Dusty can sing a love song at her – “Goodbye Old Paint,” a romantic song about a pony presumably named “Paint.” Combine that with the song Dusty sings (and wrote) at the opening (“Me and My Pony”) – they’ve sort of escaped the tyranny of the love song, only to replace it with something vaguely bestial.
But I’m over-interpreting this stuff from a sick, cynical modern perspective. That still doesn’t excuse repeated descriptions of the Range Busters as “gay caballeros,” or the fact that the Ds, Dusty and Davy, sleep together in one bed.
That’s to say nothing of the repeated Elmer Horror. Warning: I will get back to laughing at the pop culture of WWII soon, but first I have to run a terrifying image of Alibi’s heartless, demonic hell doll, and accompany it with an in-depth discussion of the brute.
Now, the past half dozen or so Range Busters have been slowly, almost imperceptibly increasing Elmer Sneezeweed’s personal autonomy. We’ve seen the thing “speak” before, but it’s always been attributable to Alibi’s ventriloquism and voice throwing – this goes back to The Three Mesquiteers, for Elmer is like Robbie the Robot in his cross-continuity celebrity, and unintentional terror.
Then Elmer started moving on his own, even without Alibi in physical contact with his heathen, wooden paramour. The voice throwing was still going on, so one could simply write this off with, say, some sort of steampunk mechanism in the puppet’s innards, or something.
But Elmer soon took on vocal skills totally independent of Alibi’s own voice throwing. He was still present, at least, in these hideous incidents, though now the horror was unmistakable. Alibi, at the very best, was suffering some severe schizophrenia, chatting with his inanimate object like a common member of Batman’s Rogue Gallery.
Ah, but NOW! Now, Elmer is inarguably independent. Before, only Alibi conversed with his eerily sentient marionette, meaning it was just a manifestation of a sick mind’s hallucinations. But now all the Range Busters are casually conversing with the hateful monster (whose first line in this entry is “massacre ‘em all,” clear evidence of the doll’s psychotic murderousness). Even the minor characters are chatting away, and no one ever takes the slightest offense to this unnatural, immoral manifestation. The only explanation is that The Range Busters’ universe has passed through some sort of wormhole and been deposited in a world of Lovecraftian terrors, with Elmer serving as the Eldritch gods’ emissary. Yeah, that’s obviously the only explanation.
At least the doll isn’t walking around yet…
Oh right, WWII! So there’s been this truck racin’ across the Corriganville estate, and doings have transpired long enough that the Range Busters decide to investigate…well, except for Alibi, who’s too old to do many stunts now, and too busy off screen preparing sacrifices for his pagan idol Elmer. It’s horse chase time, which is just about the only action sequence to be found in this entry – to counter the overload of stagecoach robberies in Arizona Stage Coach. (The truck’s villainy, it must be said, is transporting dynamite and Japanese rifles – meaning the reason the Range Busters are fighting spies has moved right back in to “random.”)
And I tell you, it sure is odd seeing western archetypes sharing the screen with gangster movie stereotypes – for that’s what The Range Busters think (totally hypothetical) Japanese spies would look like…They’re even Caucasians! Veeeery Japanese.
No, wait, there’s one genuinely Japanese spy creeping about – that’d be Old Man Conroy’s manservant Cookie (some guy named freaking Escolastico Baucin!), whom everyone previously thought was from the Philippines. And really, Cookie? Uh oh, they’re dabblin’ in racism! (Indeed, the moment Cookie is outed as a Nippon, all our noble Caucasian leads instantly start espousing the merits of anti-Asian internment camps….Nice one, guys.)
The home front spy ring stuff is resolved rather ahead of time, even considering the oft scant running times The Range Busters boast (53 whole minutes today!). Only Cookie has crumbled away, probably back off to Japania, or whatever these people think Japan is called. So we’ve got a full 20 minutes left, and that’s even with nuclear-force filler already employed – filler such as Dusty’s many songs, and the longest, slowest, most repetitive horseback chases the genre has yet to grant me. So what can we do to stretch things out further?
Stock footage? It seems the U.S. Army has arrived on behalf of the plot, and charged the Range Busters with accompanying a delivery of special Army horses to the Philippines – these horses are to somehow aid the U.S. war effort in Asia, presumably as food. And I swear, I’ve seen enough 40s B-movies in the past several months, and I keep thinking I’ve seen the mightiest stock footage montage possible. These films keep proving me wrong, with its full five minutes of ships at sea and horses on cranes.
The stock footage still somehow doesn’t take as much time as needed. That means let’s just blank out the screen, and slowly, slowly flash the names of all the ports between, yup, Texas and Bataan. Galveston. Havana. Panama. Honolulu. Wake. Guam. Philippines. Man, it’s like a PowerPoint!
The Range Busters are in the Philippines now…or a Hollywood soundstage, at any rate. Though, to be honest, that’s actually a step up for The Range Busters. This is expansive, by Buster terms, coming close to the cheaper Charlie Chan entries. So we get a cabana restaurant set, filled with faux bamboo and all the Asian “actors” the producers could amass on their way to the internment camps. To this setting Alibi brings his freaking doll, which wouldn’t even seem normal if I weren’t horrified of it. Like the Ugly Americans they are, they instantly force the native band to play “Home on the Range,” allowing Dusty another unrequested opportunity to croon at us all.
Then, plot momentum stalled for quite some time now, Cookie randomly strolls into the café – this is the “justification” for the film’s first 35 minutes, because otherwise the Range Busters surely wouldn’t recognize this dastard. Meaning surely they wouldn’t start an impromptu barroom brawl (frankly, the best this series has offered), and then they surely wouldn’t nab a massive cabal of Japs and Nazis and Mussolinites all palling around together, as was the Axis’ wont. Well done, I guess, Range Busters.
But there’s still 6 minutes left ‘til 53, and the production’s been kicked out of the soundstage. Oh Gaaaaaawd! So it turns out Davy, who’s been granted the primary plot utility on account of it’s his first entry, overhears Cookie naming a further spy – way back in Texas. One reversed stock footage voyage across 6,000 nautical miles later and –
They’re having a fistfight with un-American sleeper agent Richards (fatso Frank Ellis), and seemingly his goon squad (because all Buster baddies have goon squads). Well, that filled out enough more time, let’s call a wrap on this crazy, propagandistic mess.
After the traditional woman abandonment ending, Range Busters style. As usual, neither Dusty nor Davy is willing to take on the token love interest as his beard, so once again Alibi must devise an excuse to draw them away. Only the Japanese have beaten Alibi to the punch, seeing as today happens to be December 7, 1941 – if you don’t recognize that date, seriously, just Google it. The Range Busters all decide to do the right thing, unlike the actors portraying them, and register to fight Yamato.
Man, if only these film had any inter-entry continuity! I’d love to see the Range Busters back out in the Pacific theater as soldiers. Oh course the next entry’ll probably take place in the 19th century instead, so oh well…
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. 16 Arizona Stagecoach (1942)
• No. 18 Trail Riders (1942)
• No. 20 Haunted Ranch (1943)
• No. 24 Bullets and Saddles (1943)
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