Okay, all in all The Range Busters are a pretty generic B-western offering, so slavish in its imitation of The Three Mesquiteers that it behooves me to contemplate the few specific ways in which it differs. This is all that marks The Range Busters out as its own distinct aesthetic series.
The actors: Actually, employing 2/3rds of the “original” Three Mesquiteers means there isn’t much variety on this front. We see “Crash” Corrigan and “Alibi” Terhune here, just as we would have previously in the other franchise; even Terhune’s disgusting puppet Elmer is still around. The one lone distinction is “Dusty” King, who was never in any Three Mesquiteer movies. He may as well have been, though. So…not much variation.
The songs: Unlike The Three Mesquiteers, The Range Busters are actually singin’ cowboys! I fully expected that from the former franchise, and was surprised by its absence. Anywhere from one to three songs populate an average Range Busters blockbuster, affording up to 10 minutes of wasted screen time. For the most part, Dusty performs these tunes – so I guess he is a notable distinction.
The romantic triangles: The presence of tacked-on, disposable romance is nothing new to the Busters, seeing as Corrigan enjoyed such plots in his Mesquiteer days too. The distinction now is that Dusty also woos the wench, affording lightly comic rivalries between the two stars. This also allows the romances (and the singin’ they engender) more screen time, taken away from the fun western goodness.
The Corriganville setting: Nearly all the Range Buster entries were filmed on Corrigan’s self-named movie ranch set. Trail of Silver Spurs shows some scant ambition on this front, but this limited number of settings would become a real bane. It sure cheapens these films!
That’s what we’re dealing with here as a franchise. Pretty grim stuff, really, a lesser Three Mesquiteers knockoff. And with many of them unavailable. So, as a forerunner to my standard one-film consideration, let me follow my increasingly common tact for 1940s franchises and sum up the intermediate, unseen films as best I can:
The Kid’s Last Ride (1941) – Crooked saloon owner Bob Harmon – that’s how much invention these films have, they have characters ranging (and busting) from Bob Horner to Bob Harmon – Anyway, crooked saloon owner Bob Harmon seeks revenge against little boy Jimmy because Jimmy’s father put Bob’s brother in prison. Well, that’s angry man logic for ya! Jimmy is coerced into leading bad Bob to a ranch (another one?!) which is apparently home to heaping sack-loads of cash. They rob the ranch, but the Range Buster bust Bob.
And that’s just the first act.
Tumbledown Ranch in Arizona (1941) – Tumbledown Ranch is a ranch (you work with what you got) in Arizona. So this is going to be another standard “defend the ranch” entry that –
Say wha’?! This one involves time travel?! Oh…kay then. So it seems Range Busters “Crash” Corrigan and “Dusty” King (themselves) are not themselves, but are actually their own sons…or something. But when both men are simultaneously clonked in the head at a rodeo, they travel back to the 19th century, where their same-named fathers were members of the Range Busters. Rrrright.
Then it’s a simply matter of defending a ranch from one menace or another – namely railroads. So…they reverted right back to formula anyway.
Wrangler’s Roost (1941) – Black Bart is back, he being a real historical figure, and thus able to appear in both Range Buster and Three Mesquiteer entries. Only in this one, Bart’s a law-abiding private citizen, while his doppelganger is off committing villainies. Yes, it’s the same “exact duplicate” plot we’ve seen in countless Mesquiteer entries, indicating just how much The Range Busters was a pure, unadulterated Mesquiteer wannabe.
Now we move on to Fugitive Valley, the main act in today’s Range Busters busting. And just what sort of good, noble, heroic deed shall the Range Busters be doing today?
How about running from lawmen? Oh yeah, they just plunge us in to a Bizarro World version of the Busters, with Crash and Dusty apparently outlaws. In their flight, only Crash is captured, and taken back to town to rot in a jail cell. Here he meets fellow wanton criminal Red Langdon (Bob Kortman), and uses substantially out-of-character aggression to establish his prison dominance.
But the Busters’ heroic villainy isn’t over yet. Dusty arrives outside to crash Crash’s cell. He passes Crash a lasso, which is all he needs to retrieve the keys from the drunken, unconscious sheriff. Thus Crash, Dusty, and their partner Langdon ride away from town like literal thieves in the night.
In their latest run from the law, Langdon proposes he take these 2/3rds of the Busters to his gang’s secret hideout: Fugitive Valley (a valley inhabited by fugitives). This hideout, location unknown to even the mightiest enforcer of the law, is the reputed lair of the Whip Gang, headed by the supposed “Whip” whom Langdon reassures the Busters doesn’t exist. But they’ll get to the bottom of this…
Okay, I think it’s become obvious now to even the most media illiterate, non-genre-savvy viewer (that is, The Range Busters’ target audience) that Crash and Dusty have faked their way into Fugitive Valley, in a Departed-esque attempt to bring it down from the inside. Still, starting as much en media res as a B-western will allow gives Fugitive Valley a nice boost in the arm right out of the gate.
So this Whip fellow may or not exist – it actually becomes ridiculously confused towards the end, evidence of a notion that wasn’t fully resolved on the filmmaker’s end. Whip aside, the clear leader of the Whip Gang is Gray (Glenn Strange, famous for also playing Universal’s lamest Frankenstein monster). Crash proposes to him a daring stagecoach robbery. At first Gray declines, the excuse being he’d rather have the 20-minute-mark fistfight legally required of all B-westerns. Face-punching over, Gray is then “OK” with the robbery.
Our supposed heroes ride through the brushlands outside Simi Valley. Upon robbing the apparently driverless stagecoach (shades of Dracula, despite Strange’s strange Frankenstein connection), the outlaws hold up the “wealthanista” inside – a clearly-wealthy man, seeing as he wears a top hat, spats, monocle, and everything else seen on Mr. Peanut. Though he passes himself off to the baddies as “Hammo the Great,” we realize it is indeed Alibi (Max Terhune), the third Range Buster. Posing as a fabulously-wealthy ventriloquist (HA!), “Hammo” performs a classic magic act – the sort with rabbits in hats and strings in sleeves. And pigeons inside one’s breast pocket. Carrier pigeons, in this particular case, as Alibi uses his escaped bird to communicate to the nearby sheriff that the Busters have successfully infiltrated the Whip Gang.
“Ah hah!” idiot members of the audience now go, “it’s all a ploy!” Thank you, most of us had it figured out already.
Upon their return to Fugitive Valley with loads of magician swag (oh yes), the final essential element of formulaic filmmaking shows up: the love interest. See Ann (Julie Duncan), apparently the nurse to this gang of lawless hoods. Engaging in the necessary love triangle, both Crash and Dusty fake the same silly “illness” to get her attention. That is, they both paint their tongues purple (?!), and claim to have an unspellable disease – something called accenmonatnotosis, or whatever. This leads, in short order, to Crash and Dusty both (uselessly) spending much of the remaining film in sick bay.
Alibi, meanwhile, has been press ganged into maintaining his Hammo ruse for the vicious killers, who really just wish to be little boys (and vice versa). Alibi performs with Elmer, the world’s most horrifying dummy, only…for once, I shall sleep easy. Why do I no longer find Elmer soul-shattering? Could be he’s already rendered my as soulless as [joke about politics deleted]. Or it could be Terhune’s new persona, as Alibi, is far less grating than his murderous Mesquiteer hick Lullaby. Also, credit must go to director S. Roy Luby, for keeping Elmer eternally in long shot (his close-ups make babies weep).
Meanwhile, Dusty serenades Ann with “My Little Prairie Annie,” a rather slowish tune (as was all popular music until Caucasians discovered other ethnicities in the 50s). It’s the same 30s/40s routine as can be seen in nearly all musicals – the very instant singing begins, everyone becomes utterly incapable of motion. It’s as though people needed either singing or moving (in a motion picture), but not both at once. That’s too much! In this modern realm, where I’m writing this while also texting, watching a movie, playing Tetris and eating a carrot, that seems a rather fool notion. But in the pre-MTV era, perhaps a song and dance was too much for people to handle – Lord knows the trailers for Singin’ in the Rain advertize it as an action movie!
But I’m rambling. Dusty’s song over, Ann rides off into the wilderness outside of Fugitive Valley. Here she sneaks away into a cave filled with yet more fugitives. While I patiently await the latest mind-blowing Range Buster plot twist, rather this new setting is the chance for –
A musical number. Oh boy, as though I hadn’t had my fill of slow crooning and cinematic stagnation! “The Chisholm Trail,” this campfire song is, with lyrics like “Tay yay yippee yippee kay yay (motherfucker).” I have nothing new to say I didn’t aimlessly ramble on about above. And when the song ends, Ann collects a mask and whip, and goes to rob…some guy. And curse this lack of Corriganville props, we have to make believe Ann is collecting loot.
So…Ann’s the Whip? Well…kinda. Damned if I know where this whole “Whip” notion came from, seeing as exposition explains Gray started his Whip Gang long before any so-called Whip came into the picture. But as it all plays out, Ann is a good guy – (What, you thought they’d go all “Catwoman” on us? Moral grey areas, in a B-western?! Yeah right!) Yes, Ann has independently infiltrated Fugitive Valley (which has more leaks than…a very leaky thing), all over some understated revenge subplot. This means, when the climax comes, Ann’s caveman cohorts shall join the Range Busters’ lawmen and completely outnumber the outlaws – ‘cause who wants suspense in a B-western?!
But we’ll get to that climax. For now it’s time for – a song! Yeah, the Busters have a three-song quota to fill. Once again Dusty woos Ann with his dulcet tones, riding along as he sings “Riding Along.” They’re both on horseback, and would you believe 40s filmmakers can somehow even make horse riding motion-free? The B-musical genre’s devotion to boredom is truly astounding!
Here, in anticipation of the finale, is where the movie starts to completely lose all logic, re: character motivation. While I am loathe to say movies should spell things out, Fugitive Valley is not the sort of film that benefits from complexity. I think it’s an artifact of sloppy structure. Anyway, it becomes like a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, for no good reason, with three or four separate parties all fighting each other, and our characters belonging to one or more group at once, all lying to each other.
Thank God there’s always a simple resolution to such nonsense, no matter how convoluted a western gets. Cue climactic shootout, with a fine mixture of horse riding, fist fighting, and all the other fun stunt work I got plenty of from the Mesquiteers. The Range Busters suffer from a lack of Yakima Canutt as stunt coordinator, meaning the action kinda sucks. But with Ray “Crash” Corrigan, a student of Canutt’s, it’s not a huge detriment. It’s like the step-down from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan: different tone, different skills, but each entirely successful in their own aims.
While avoiding details, the good guys win. Are you shocked? Is your worldview shattered?
Nearly everything is resolved, except for the love triangle between Dusty, Crash and Ann. One member of a love triangle must always lose. Here, it’s Ann. Due to the Gods of the Snapback, the Range Busters franchise demands its heroes remain single at the end of each entry – this allows their next adventure to exist in total isolation. There are never any overriding arcs in these old-timey series.
Indeed, it is a carrier pigeon message Alibi relates which sends the Range Busters off on their next journey – and out of Ann’s feminine clutches. That’s all well and good – who doesn’t love a film ending with the next call to adventure – except it’s all a ruse by Alibi. Once again, in true Mesquiteer fashion (and again I must remind myself this is not a Three Mesquiteers movie), Max Terhune has cock-blocked most efficiently, due to his own bizarre asexual compulsions. The only justification given is Alibi’s closing line:
“You can’t settle down and break up the Range Busters.”
Related posts:
• No. 4 Trail of the Silver Spurs (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. 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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