Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, March 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The cover art is probably by Sam Cherry, although I’m not a hundred percent convinced of that. It’s a nice cover, no matter who painted it. That’s my copy in the scan.

For more than a decade, the stories about Texas Ranger Walt Slade were one of the regular series in THRILLING WESTERN. A. Leslie Scott, under the pseudonym Bradford Scott, wrote more than 70 yarns about Slade, who was also known as El Halcon (The Hawk) and was reputed to be an outlaw, although he was actually an undercover Texas Ranger. “Trail From Yesterday”, the Slade novelette in this issue, is the final pulp story in the series, although as most if not all of you know, a few years later Scott began a series of paperback original novels featuring the character that ran for even longer.

This is an excellent tale for Slade to go out on, as far as his pulp run. Most of the time, these stories find Slade chasing outlaws in the rangelands of West Texas or the brush country of South Texas. “Trail From Yesterday” begins in Dallas (a far different place in the 1880s from what it is today) and the trail of a famous Texas owlhoot was believed to be dead leads Slade to the treacherous swamplands of East Texas, with its dangers of snakes, gators, and quicksand. The plot involves smuggling, gun-running, and a fortune in black opals. Scott packs almost enough material for a novel into this novelette, and he keeps the pace racing along with his usual vivid descriptions and several terrific shootouts. Slade also has a great sidekick in this one, Little Mose Wagner, a black former cowboy who’s too stove up to ride the range anymore, but he functions as Slade’s guide and assistant during this adventure in the swamp. This is great stuff, one of the best Walt Slade pulp yarns I’ve read. Scott was at the top of his game here.

The name Dabney Otis Collins is familiar to me from many Western pulp TOCs, but I don’t recall if I’ve ever read anything by him until now. His short story in this issue, “The Third Outlaw”, is about a fateful encounter between a lone cowboy and a gang of bank robbers on the run from the law as a blizzard is closing in. It’s a very suspenseful, surprisingly hardboiled tale, and I liked it a lot. I’m going to have to keep my eyes open for more by Collins.

The last time I read a Swap and Whopper story by Syl McDowell, I surprised myself by kind of liking it. The S&W story in this issue, “The Roaming Riders”, is pretty entertaining, too. It’s the usual goofy mix of wild circumstances, this time including a runaway pair of pants with all the duo’s money in it, a housing development in the desert of Southern California (this series is a modern-day Western), and an escaped elephant that’s supposed to be in a jungle movie. McDowell pulls it all together and makes it work fairly well. I got a few smiles out of this one. No outright chuckles that I can remember, but the series is growing on me.

Jim O’Mara was a pseudonym of Vernon Fluharty, who also wrote Westerns under the name Michael Carder. He was never all that prolific but he had a steady career producing well-written Westerns. His short story in this issue, “Collateral”, is a cattlemen vs. sodbusters yarn, written from the point of view of a former cowboy turned farmer. It’s a rather bleak yarn, but it has some nice action and a dark but still somewhat hopeful ending. I liked it quite a bit.

The same can’t be said of “Crop o’ Calamity” by Roger Dee (pseudonym of Roger D. Aycock), an author probably best remembered for his science fiction. This is another humorous Western about a couple of characters named Nosy Nolan and Doc Durgin, and it has something to do with escapees from a wild animal show. I don’t know for sure because it’s written in present tense (a style I don’t care for) and is dialect-heavy, and I just didn’t care for it at all, leading me to give up after a few pages. I may be warming up to Swap and Whopper after all these years, but not this one.

Much, much better is “Who’ll Ride With Me”, from the always dependable Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. This novelette is a reprint from the August 1947 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. It’s a cavalry vs. the Apaches yarn set in Arizona Territory, and as usual when Wheeler-Nicholson is writing about the military, there’s a real ring of authenticity to it. Some great action, although the ending isn’t quite as dramatic as it could have been. This story is also a good example of how the late Jon Tuska was wrong when he claimed that pulp editors wouldn’t allow romances between white and Hispanic characters. There’s a nicely handled romantic angle between the white cavalry lieutenant who’s the protagonist and the beautiful daughter of a Mexican rancher, and it’s written the same as any other romance in a Western pulp.

Harold F. Cruickshank wrote a lot of air war stories early in his pulp career and then became a prolific Western pulpster. I’ve never cared for his Pioneer Folk series that ran in RANGE RIDERS WESTERN. He has a stand-alone short story, “Prodigal Gun Thunder”, in this issue. It’s about a young man framed for being a horse thief who returns home from a stretch in prison to get to the bottom of things and settle the score. It’s a definite improvement over the other Western stories by Cruickshank that I’ve read, but there’s still something about his writing that just doesn’t resonate with me.

Harvey Ivison is a brand-new name to me. He wrote only a few stories for the pulps. His story “Thataway” is about a fugitive from the law who isn’t exactly what he appears to be. On the run from a posse, he shows up at a ranch where there’s a badly injured man, and unexpected things happen. This story is written with a very nice hardboiled tone that includes a few traces of dry humor. I really liked it and will have to be on the lookout for more stories by Harvey Ivison.

This issue concludes with a condensed novel, SCORPION by Will James. Is there a difference between a condensed novel and an abridged novel? I don’t know, but I feel like there should be. In a condensed novel, you take out words here and lines there, right? Whereas in an abridged novel, you take out entire scenes or sections. I have no idea which approach was taken in producing the version of SCORPION printed here. I remember reading James’s horse novel SMOKY when I was a kid, but that’s all I could tell you about it. SCORPION is a horse novel, too, and while I wanted to like it, page after page of horse-breaking narrative with no dialogue or actual plot did me in. I didn’t read this one, either. I just don’t have the time or patience I once did.

So the March 1951 issue of THRILLING WESTERN turns out to be a really mixed bag. The Walt Slade story by Scott is superb. The stories by Collins, O’Mara, Wheeler-Nicholson, and Ivison are all very good to excellent. The Swap and Whopper yarn by McDowell is okay, the Cruickshank story is readable but forgettable, and I didn’t finish the other two. As always, some of you might enjoy the stories I didn’t, so if you have this issue on your shelves, it’s worth taking down and sampling its contents.

D'Artagnan - H. Bedford-Jones

I’ve been a fan of the Three Musketeers for a long time, ever since I bought the Whitman edition of the novel when I was a kid and read it. I read the Classics Illustrated comic book version, too, and over the years I’ve watched and enjoyed most of the movie versions. I really liked the BBC TV series from a few years back and that’s how I see the characters in my head now.

So when I was in the mood to read a swashbuckler recently, I picked up D'ARTAGNAN, a pastiche sequel to the original, written by one of my favorite authors, H. Bedford-Jones. It was published originally as a three-part serial in the pulp ADVENTURE in September and October of 1928 and reprinted several years ago by Altus Press.

Set approximately a year after the events in THE THREE MUSKETEERS, this novel is supposedly, according to Bedford-Jones, expanded from an unpublished manuscript by Alexandre Dumas. ADVENTURE plays that up on the cover of the issue containing the first installment of the serial. However, according to the Fictionmags Index, the only material by Dumas is a one-page excerpt from an article that has nothing to do with the book itself. No matter. D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are back, protecting Queen Anne of France from the schemes of the evil Cardinal Richelieu, although D’Artagnan does most of the heavy lifting in this book, befitting the title. Aramis is wounded and barely shows up. Athos and Porthos are busy with other things for most of the first half, although they play major roles in the second half of the book.

The plot, which involves various rings used for identification, missing documents and letters, wild coincidence after wild coincidence, ambushes, swordfights, disguises, and a mysterious child, is almost impossible to summarize. All the political intrigue is so complicated that I’m still not sure I understood everything that was going on. But again, no matter. D’Artagnan and his friends gallop hither and yon and save the day. That’s all that’s really important.

Bedford-Jones’ prose is a little more flowery than usual, which I suppose is understandable since he was writing a Dumas pastiche, and the plot, as I mentioned, is downright murky. But the action scenes, and there are a lot of them, are great. The final climactic battle, in which D’Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos face overwhelming odds in a French tavern, is just terrific, the sort of thing that would have had me bouncing up and down in my chair in suspense and excitement if I’d read this when I was a kid.

The good stuff far outweighs the weaker bits in D’ARTAGNAN. I had a great time reading it. If you’re a Three Musketeers fan like me or just enjoy a good swashbuckler, you should definitely give it a try. It’s available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

The Trailer Park Girls - Glenn Canary

Like many of the soft-core novels of the mid-Sixties, THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS is very much a crime novel in disguise. Three young army veterans who met while in the service, Burton Stone, Jack Cannon, and Al Leeds, move in together in a trailer and decide, for various reasons, that they’re going to rob a department store in nearby Cleveland. But then they meet three young women who also live in the same trailer park, Sally Talent, Marianne Nirvell, and Fran Novak. Of course, each of the guys falls for one of the girls, and that winds up greatly complicating their holdup plan. Will they be able to carry out the robbery, or will love derail their criminal scheme?

Author Glenn Canary gives us a fairly simple plot in THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS, although there are a few twists and turns along the way. The first half of the book consists mostly of Canary filling in the backgrounds of his six main characters. He does an excellent job of it, too, but the book picks up steam as the robbery comes closer and closer. The last 40 or 50 pages of this novel are really suspenseful. I was going to put it aside and go to bed, but I couldn’t. Had to keep turning the pages to find out what was going to happen.

THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS was published originally in 1963 by Monarch Books, ostensibly a step up from Beacon, Nightstand, etc., even though the sort of books they all published was very similar. Glenn Canary had written two novels for Monarch before this one, and later, in the Seventies, he wrote two suspense novels for Pinnacle Books, plus some short stories for various mystery and men’s magazines during the Sixties. Not a prolific career, but based on THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS, he was a pretty darned good writer. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Black Gat Books has reprinted it in paperback and e-book editions, and if you like a good slice of life/crime novel, you definitely need to give this one a try. Recommended.

Movies I've Missed (Until Now): Law of the Lawless (1964)

I enjoyed that Audie Murphy movie enough last week that when Grit TV ran a Dale Robertson movie I hadn’t seen on Saturday night, I watched it, too. Adding to the appeal is that LAW OF THE LAWLESS (1964) was written by the old pulpster and paperbacker Steve Fisher, whose work I’ve always found to be entertaining and interesting.

Robertson plays a former gunfighter who’s become a circuit-riding judge. He arrives in a town in Kansas to conduct the murder trial of the local big shot’s son, who killed a man in a saloon shootout. Complicating matters is that this is Robertson’s former hometown, and the man on trial is an old friend of his. The defendant’s wealthy father, played by Barton MacLane, wants to get his son acquitted of the charge, of course, but he also has another agenda that prompts him to bring in hired gun Bruce Cabot, whose character just happens to have killed Robertson’s father years earlier. This script rivals a Walt Coburn yarn for angst-filled backstory!

Elsewhere in the top-notch cast, William Bendix plays the local sheriff, who is also the prosecutor and the pastor of the local church. Yvonne De Carlo is a saloon girl, Kent Taylor is the defense attorney, John Agar plays the defendant, and Lon Chaney Jr. is a hulking henchman. Don “Red” Barry shows up briefly, also as a henchman. Jody McCrea, fresh from his role as Deadhead in the beach movies, plays Agar’s victim in the shootout.

There’s a little action along the way, but for the most part, LAW OF THE LAWLESS is a pretty talky film. There’s a long courtroom scene reminiscent of Perry Mason. The ending is a bit of a twist, but while I can see what Fisher was trying to do, it was also a bit of a letdown to me and I’m not sure it really worked. The movie is solid entertainment up to that point, however.

This was the first Western produced by A.C. Lyles, who turned out a string of such medium-budget films featuring veteran actors. When I was a kid, those Lyles-produced Westerns were a staple at the drive-in theater a quarter of a mile up the road from where I grew up, especially on Merchant’s Night during the summers. Merchant’s Night was usually on Tuesday, and you could get in free with tickets given out by local businesses when you bought something. The first half of the double bill was usually an older Elvis picture or a beach movie, and the second half was usually a Western, often one produced by Lyles. Most weeks I walked to the theater and watched the movies from the benches down front, by the playground. This was before Daylight Savings Time was a thing in Texas, so the movies would start around 8:30 in the evening and were over around 12:30, at which time I would walk home. It seems crazy now that a 12-year-old would do such a thing and nobody ever thought twice about it, but it really was a different time back then. A better time in many ways. But there’s no going back, is there, and at this point, I’m not sure I’d want to. I’ll revisit that era in my mind, though, any time.

The Horse - James Ciccone

James Ciccone is the author of two critically acclaimed Western novels, A GOOD DAY TO DIE and STAGECOACH JUSTICE. His latest book, THE HORSE, is quite a departure from his previous books. Set mostly in Saratoga, New York, in 1863, it’s a historical/psychological thriller/horror novella centered around the world of horse racing.

The protagonist/narrator of this story is a horse trainer named Alexander Whitfield Holmes, who enters into a partnership with wealthy Charles Ogden Tripps to buy and train a filly named Lizzie W for the racing game. Things go bad between the partners, which leads to a horrific murder. The rest of the novella concerns the aftereffects of that crime as they spread out like ripples in the lives of several characters. It’s not a mystery—the reader knows right away what’s going to happen and who is responsible—but what we don’t know is how the various angles of the tragedy are going to unfold.

This story is deliberately old-fashioned in its prose—Ciccone does a superb job of capturing the texture and pace of 19th Century fiction—but harrowingly modern in its depiction of evil and the depths to which human beings can sink. It’s definitely not an easy book to read, although it becomes more so after the killing takes place. But it’s also very much worth reading because it’s one of the most compelling portraits I’ve encountered of a character who is both sympathetic and despicable at the same time. Because of the graphic violence, THE HORSE probably isn’t for everyone, but I found myself unable to put it down and give it a high recommendation. It's available in paperback and e-book editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fast Action Detective and Mystery Stories, January 1957

As you can see right on the cover (which is by the always excellent Norman Saunders, by the way), FAST ACTION DETECTIVE AND MYSTERY STORIES was a retitling of SMASHING DETECTIVE STORIES, making it one of the last detective pulps. Other than Richard Deming and Thomas Thursday, all the authors in this issue are unknown to me: Harlan Clay (I take that back, I've seen this name in Columbia Western pulps), Francis C. Battle, Saul Anthony, Peter Norcross, and Marc Miller. Although I'm sure the Deming story is good, the Saunders cover may well be the best thing about this issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, August 1967

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. I’m pretty sure that the art in the inset is by Robert Stanley. I don’t have any idea who did the rest of the cover. That’s my copy in the scan.

Or is it a pulp? It’s slightly smaller than regular pulp dimensions, and the page edges are trimmed. And it was published long after the pulp era is considered to be over. However, it’s definitely not a digest, and it’s proudly part of an unbroken publication stretching back to 1924 (“43^rd Year of Publication”, it says on the title page), so I’m calling it a pulp.
 
And as I’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, RANCH ROMANCES is the only pulp I remember seeing on the newsstands when I was a kid. Everything else was gone by then. But it’s entirely possible I laid eyes on this very issue on the magazine rack in Stephenville Drugs, where we always stopped on our way through Stephenville, Texas, so I could check out the comic book and paperback spinner racks. But I wouldn’t have even considered buying it because, you know, it had ROMANCES in the title and I was 14 years old. (I bought the first two paperback reprints of THE SPIDER, the ones by R.T.M. Scott that came bound together, at least one Mac hardboiled mystery novel by Thomas B. Dewey, and my first ever copy of PLAYBOY at Stephenville Drugs, along with other things I don’t remember, I’m sure.)

Okay, to get out of the weeds of nostalgia and move on to the August 1967 issue of RANCH ROMANCES . . . this is the first of the later, semi-pulp issues I’ve read. By the time the magazine’s run ended in 1971, it was all-reprint, but there are only a couple of older stories in this issue and the rest are new. It leads off with the short story “Wolf At His Heels” by A.E. Schraff, which is about a young outlaw being pursued by a dogged lawman not out of a sense of justice but on a mission of personal vengeance. It’s a well-written story with a satisfying ending. I’d never heard of A.E. Schraff before, but according to the Fictionmags Index, the A.E. stands for Anne Elaine. She wrote more than a dozen stories for RANCH ROMANCES, ZANE GREY WESTERN MAGAZINE, and FAR WEST during the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, then did a handful of mystery yarns for ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE in the Eighties. That’s all I know about her, but based on this story, she was a pretty good writer.

And sure enough, a little research tells me this from Goodreads: “Anne Elaine Schraff grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She received both her bachelor's and master's degrees from California State University at Northridge and taught high school for ten years.

Anne paid her way through college by writing short stories for magazines. Since college she has written hundreds of stories and over eighty books including historical fiction, biographies, science books, and her favorite, fictional books for young people. She is published as both Anne Schraff and Anne E. Schraff.

Her background, which she describes as "multicultural, lower middle-class neighborhood, including African Americans, Mexican Americans, Arab Americans, and Filipino Americans," is her greatest inspiration when writing.”

Lee Martin has been used as a pseudonym by several different writers, but the Lee Martin who wrote the short story “Live Bait” in this issue was actually Margery Lee Martin, author of several dozen Western and mystery stories in the Sixties. “Live Bait” is sort of the opposite of “Wolf At His Heels” because in this story, a lawman is the target of some outlaw brothers who want to kill him, and they’re willing to use another brother’s widow to trap their quarry. This is another solid yarn with a satisfying, if predictable, ending.

Mona Jennings has only one credit in the Fictionmags Index, her short story “Indian Girl” in this issue. Mostly domestic drama with a little action at the end, this tale is about a young rancher who finds an Indian girl with her leg caught in an animal trap and takes her home to care for her injury. He has a younger brother and sister, all of them made orphans by an Indian attack several years earlier. Emotional turmoil ensues. Another well-written tale, although the ending is a little too unresolved for my taste.

Giff Cheshire was an old pro, of course. His novelette “Dry Summer” in this issue is a reprint from the 2^nd July, 1956 number of RANCH ROMANCES. It’s the story of a young cowboy caught in the middle of a clash between a big rancher and a group of smaller ranchers over water rights. The plot is very traditional, but the story is well-written for the most part. I’ve read enough by Giff Cheshire now to know that I usually find his work a little on the bland side, and that’s true of this yarn.

W.J. Reynolds was another prolific Western pulpster, authoring approximately 120 stories between the mid-Forties and the early Seventies, most of them appearing in various Western pulps, but he also sold Western stories to some of the lower-rung men’s magazines such as ADAM and KNIGHT. I’ve read several stories by him and enjoyed them all. In “Bloody Butte”, his yarn in this issue, an army scout rescues a girl from a gang of marauders and scalphunters, and then they have to escape the gang’s pursuit, eventually forting up at the butte of the title.

In 1967, when this issue reprinted Elmer Kelton’s novella “Die by the Gun” (original appearance in the 2^nd January Number, 1954 issue of RANCH ROMANCES), Kelton was a well-regarded author of traditional Western stories and novels, but he was still several years away from the elevated literary reputation he would begin to enjoy later in his career. One of the lines he often used when speaking to groups was “Louis L’Amour’s heroes are seven feet tall and invincible. Mine are five-foot-seven and nervous.” I don’t know if Dolph Noble, the protagonist of this tale, qualifies as nervous, but he certainly has his share of angst to deal with. He’s the sheriff of a West Texas county and has a wild younger brother who wants to be either a lawman or an owlhoot and isn’t all that particular about which. He’s in love with the wife of an outlaw whose gang has been plaguing the area. The townspeople believe he hasn’t been able to corral the gang because he’s holding back on account of his feelings for the woman. His ambitious but flawed former deputy wants to take his job away in the next election. So Dolph has plenty of trouble on his plate, and Kelton keeps twisting the screws to make it worse for him. Not surprisingly, this is easily the best story in the issue, with solid writing and excellent characterization.

This is the first of the Sixties issues of RANCH ROMANCES that I’ve read, and overall it’s very good. Cheshire’s story is the weakest in the bunch, and it’s not bad, just not as good as the others. I think the tone isn’t as hardboiled as the Fifties issues I’ve read, and the romance elements are played up a little more, but there’s still good action in every story. It came out in the summer between eighth and ninth grade for me. As I mentioned above, I wouldn’t have bought it at the time . . . but if I had, I would have enjoyed it. It’s well worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Under Sexton Blake's Orders - John Hunter

“Under Sexton Blake’s Orders” is a novelette by prolific British author John Hunter that first appeared in the 1942 edition of SEXTON BLAKE ANNUAL. It was reprinted in the anthology SEXTON BLAKE WINS, which is where I read it. After enjoying but being slightly disappointed in the anthology’s previous entry by G.H. Teed, I was looking forward to seeing what Hunter would do with Sexton Blake.

This story features a character created by Hunter and used only in his stories, as far as I know. Two-fisted sea captain James Dack is a bit of a shady character, sometimes on the side of the law, sometimes not. In this yarn, he finds himself mixed up in something that’s too nefarious even for his somewhat flexible morals, involving a high-ranking Nazi prisoner who has been captured and brought to England for interrogation. Unfortunately, he’s escaped and is trying to get out of the country. Luckily, Sexton Blake is also on the case, and he and Captain Dack (who have clashed in the past) have to team up as wary allies to foil the scheme.

For the most part, Hunter keeps things perking along nicely in this tale, and there’s some excellent battle action at sea. The story seemed a bit rushed at times, leading me to think this plot might have worked better as a novella, but “Under Sexton Blake’s Orders” is an entertaining yarn. As far as I recall, it’s the first thing I’ve read by John Hunter. I’m going to have to try one of his full-length Sexton Blake novels or maybe one of his Westerns.

Trickshot - Jamie Mason

Having edited several of Jamie Mason’s novels and read a number of others, I’ve become a fan of his work. I’d like to think I had a little influence on his decision to move into the Western genre. His first Western under his own name, TRICKSHOT, came out recently, and it’s a great yarn. Here’s the blurb I gave the book after reading it in manuscript:

Part Maverick, part The Wild Wild West, part Spaghetti Western, and all fun, Trickshot is a hugely entertaining, action-packed new Western series from one of the best writers in the business, Jamie Mason. If you’re a Western fan, you’ll have a great time reading this novel. I certainly did.

Jack Tricke is a gambler and expert marksman during the era just before the outbreak of the Civil War. In trouble with the law, he takes the only way out of going to jail: he agrees to work as an undercover operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His first assignment finds him joining a traveling medicine show in Arizona Territory. As you might expect, that provides a colorful bunch of characters to serve as both allies and adversaries for Tricke.

Mason keeps the pace galloping along in very entertaining fashion, and he does a great job with the setting. Jack Tricke is a roguish but likable protagonist, and this novel sets up an ongoing storyline that will carry him to the brink of the Civil War and probably beyond. I really enjoyed TRICKSHOT and look forward to seeing what happens next. This one is available in an e-book edition from Amazon and gets a high recommendation from me.

Movies I've Missed (Until Now): Gunpoint (1966)

Looking around for something to watch on TV the other night, I noticed that Grit was showing an Audie Murphy Western I didn’t remember ever seeing. Audie was one of my dad’s favorite movie cowboys, along with Randolph Scott and Rod Cameron, and I watched many of those movies with him. Watching an Audie Murphy Western these days feels a little like my dad is visiting me for a while.

So, naturally, I watched GUNPOINT, from 1966, one of Audie’s last few movies before his untimely death in 1969. It starts with something else that held considerable nostalgia value for me: a train robbery filmed on the Durango-to-Silverton narrow gauge line in Colorado, which we rode on during a family vacation in the early Sixties. I recognized it right away. Audie, as the local sheriff, suspects the train will be held up by a gang of outlaws led by the vicious Drago (Morgan Woodward, who else?), but his efforts to foil the robbery are thwarted by his treacherous deputy who’s actually in with the gang. The deputy is played by Denver Pyle, a rare occasion of him playing a bad guy, but he handles the role well.

Through a rather convoluted setup, the outlaws wind up kidnapping a saloon songbird as well (Joan Staley), whose fiancée is gambler/gunman Warren Stevens. Before you know it, Audie and Stevens have teamed up with some other townspeople to form a posse and go after the outlaws. It's a long chase with plenty of action as the posse gets whittled down until finally there are only a couple left to settle things with the bad guys.

I have to admit, there’s not much in this movie that I didn’t feel like I had written dozens of times in dozens of my books, which made for a definite sense of déjà vu. But I enjoyed GUNPOINT quite a bit anyway. The cast is comfortingly familiar. In addition to those already mentioned, it includes Roy Barcroft as the town doctor and Edgar Buchanan and Royal Dano as a couple of half-loco mustangers. There’s a spectacular scene with the train early on and then good stunt work all the way through. The photography and scenery are nice. There are a few lapses of logic in the script by Mary and Willard Willingham, but veteran director Earl Bellamy keeps things moving along briskly enough that they’re not too much of a distraction.

GUNPOINT isn’t as good as most of the movies Audie made earlier in his career. It’s just an average Western. But sometimes that’s all you need, and I had a good time watching it. I think my dad would have, too.