Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Cariboo Trail (1950)

You remember in BLAZING SADDLES when Bart says to the townspeople of Rock Ridge, “You’d do it for Randolph Scott,” and the townspeople take off their hats, put their hands over their hearts, and respond in hushed reverence, “Randolph Scott!” Well, I’m just like those settlers. I love Randolph Scott movies.

Which is why I was surprised when I came across one that I don’t recall ever hearing of, let alone watching. THE CARIBOO TRAIL was released in 1950 and finds Scott playing Montana rancher Jim Redfern, who drives a trail herd into Canada with his partner Mike Evans (played by Bill Williams, who, a few years later, would star in the TV show THE ADVENTURES OF KIT CARSON, one of my early favorites). Redfern wants to establish a ranch and open up Canada to the beef industry, but Evans is more interested in hunting for gold. They run into an old prospector known as Grizzly (the immortal George “Gabby” Hayes) but also encounter some hardcases (Jim Davis and Douglas Kennedy among them) working for a villainous town boss played by Victor Jory. The only one in town who doesn’t seem to be under Jory’s thumb is a beautiful saloon owner played by Karin Booth.

You’ve all see enough Westerns to know how this set-up is going to play out. There’s nothing in the workmanlike script by Frank Gruber (another old favorite of mine) that’s going to surprise you, but it’s well-constructed and provides plenty of opportunities for action as well as a little romance and pathos, the latter provided by a fine performance from Bill Williams, whose character loses an arm due to injuries suffered in a stampede and become embittered. Scott is as stalwart and likable as ever, and I’ll watch and enjoy Gabby Hayes in anything. He’s my all-time favorite Western sidekick, and this was his final movie. Victor Jory is suitably smarmy and evil, and a very young Dale Robertson shows up as a cowboy.

Many of the reviews of this movie on IMDB complain about the cheap Cinecolor process and the photography, and the quality is pretty inconsistent. However, the movie doesn’t look bad, and parts of it actually look pretty good. There’s some spectacular scenery. Its biggest flaw, as far as I’m concerned, is a terribly staged fight scene between Scott and Kennedy in which none of the so-called punches are even remotely convincing. I’m actually surprised they let the scene go through like that. But that’s an aberration and the rest of the action is fine.

Overall, THE CARIBOO TRAIL is a pretty minor film, I suppose, but it has its moments that worked really well for me and reminded me of why I love Westerns so much. If you’re a Randolph Scott and/or Gabby Hayes fan, it’s certainly worth watching.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Man From Nevada (1929)

THE MAN FROM NEVADA is another silent Western starring Tom Tyler that was released in 1929, right after THE LAW OF THE PLAINS, which I wrote about last week. Both of those movies are included on a new DVD and Blu-ray release from Undercrank Productions.

Several members of the cast are the same in this one, as are the director (J.P. McGowan), the screenwriter (Sally Winters), and the cinematographer (Hap Depew). I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they shot THE LAW OF THE PLAINS one week and THE MAN FROM NEVADA the next week. Tom Tyler plays rancher Jack Carter, whose neighbor is a rather shiftless sodbuster with a beautiful daughter (Natalie Joyce) and three sons, two of whom are scrappy adolescents and the other is a toddler. An evil cattle baron played by Al Ferguson has his eye on the sodbuster’s ranch and plans to get his hands on it in a swindle assisted by his crooked land recorder brother. Stalwart Tom Tyler is having none of that, of course, so the villain and his henchmen (one of them played by legendary stuntman and stunt coordinator Cliff Lyons) frame him for rustling and try to get the sheriff to arrest him. Chases, fistfights, and shootings ensue.

McGowan, who also had an acting role in the previous film, stays behind the camera this time and keeps things charging along in very fine fashion. There’s an excellent stunt early on where Tyler’s character stops a runaway wagon carrying the helpless toddler, and while I couldn’t be absolutely certain, I think he performed it himself. The script stretches credibility every now and then but has some fine dramatic moments and a very satisfying showdown at the end. Tyler has a natural screen presence that allows him to dominate every scene he’s in, and an actor I’m not familiar with, Bill Nolte, does a fine job as the comedy relief sidekick, as he does in the previous film.

This is another fine restoration job from Undercrank Productions with a top-notch new score from Ben Model. Depew’s photography looks great. At one point, I believe THE MAN FROM NEVADA was considered a lost film. I’m glad they found and restored it, because I really enjoyed it. The same outfit has done a set of two silent Tom Mix Westerns. I’ve ordered it from Amazon and look forward to watching them.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Law of the Plains (1929)

I’m familiar with Tom Tyler mostly as the hero of the CAPTAIN MARVEL and THE PHANTOM movie serials, plus a few Three Mesquiteers entries playing Stony Brooke, and assorted parts as villains and supporting characters. I wasn’t aware that he starred in dozens of silent Westerns during the Twenties. Undercrank Productions has just released a couple of them on a DVD and Blu-ray collection, THE LAW OF THE PLAINS (1929) and THE MAN FROM NEVADA (also 1929). I recently watched THE LAW OF THE PLAINS.

As this one opens, Tyler plays Dan O’Brien, formerly an American Marine who has settled down and owns a ranch in an unnamed South American country, where he lives with his young son Dan Jr. A couple of renegade Americans take advantage of the chaos caused by a revolution to steal the ranch and kill O’Brien, who dies in his son’s arms.

Years later, Dan Jr. (also played by Tom Tyler) has grown into a stalwart cowboy who continues to work on ranches in South America. A trail drive brings him back to the ranch where he grew up, which is still being operated by the two villains who stole it. Dan arrives in time to save the beautiful niece of one of the villainous partners, who’s about to be married off to the other bad guy. Recognizing Dan as the son of the man they murdered in order to get their hands on the ranch, the varmints set out to get rid of him. All this plays out just like a traditional Western. There’s only an occasional indication that it takes place in South America.

I think silent Westerns are great fun and I always enjoy watching them. THE LAW OF THE PLAINS is definitely a cut above average. The restoration done by Undercrank Productions from a copy held by the Library of Congress is just superb. The film looks great, very close to what it must have looked like when it was brand-new. There’s a reel missing in the middle, but a couple of title cards fill in what happened, so the story carries on without any trouble following it. The accompanying musical score is a new one, not the original, composed and performed by Ben Model, and it’s excellent as well and really fits what’s happening on the screen.

Tom Tyler does a good job as the hero, doesn’t overact, and looks great as a cowboy. Natalie Joyce is the girl and I wasn’t as fond of her, but to be fair, she really doesn’t have much to do other than be menaced by the bad guys. And speaking of the bad guys, one of them is played by J.P. McGowan, who also produced and directed the film, and he does a great job as a character described in a title card as “depraved in mind and body”. Sure, he’s a little over the top, but it seems like he’s having a fine time being evil, and that’s contagious. Al Ferguson is the other main villain, and the great stuntman Cliff Lyons plays a henchman and coordinates all the stunt work.

Many of the same people worked on the other film in this set, THE MAN FROM NEVADA, so I’m looking forward to watching it. If it’s as much fun as THE LAW OF THE PLAINS, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Cliffhanger (1994)

I’ve been a Sylvester Stallone fan for nearly 50 years now. Livia and I saw ROCKY either while we were still dating or right after we got married, I don’t remember which, and I’ve just liked the guy ever since. His current TV series, TULSA KING, is one of our favorites. But I’ve missed some of his movies along the way, including CLIFFHANGER. Until now, of course.

Stallone is a mountain rescue ranger in this one, and early on, a tragedy occurs for which he blames himself. But don’t worry, there’s only a little angst. He’s about to walk away from his job, his best friend, and his girl, when a bunch of bad guys pull off a ridiculously complicated mid-air heist of a hundred million dollars, contained in three cases of used thousand dollar bills. But the money cases are lost during a mid-air transfer, falling onto a snow-covered mountain, and the plane carrying the bad guys crashes nearby (with most of them surviving), and now Stallone and his friends have to corral the bad guys and keep them from getting away with the loot.

Lots and lots of action ensues, including fistfights, shootouts, and plenty of mountain climbing. Many of the reviews of this movie on IMDB refer to it as DIE HARD ON A MOUNTAIN, and that’s about the best description of it. Yeah, the script, co-written by Stallone, is predictable and stretches suspension of disbelief nearly to the breaking point on numerous occasions, but the cast and director Renny Harlin make it work.

Speaking of the cast, this movie is full of actors I like. John Lithgow is the leader of the bad guys and chews the scenery with great enthusiasm. One of my absolute favorite character actors, Rex Linn, is another villain. Michael Rooker from THE WALKING DEAD, looking impossibly young, is Stallone’s buddy and fellow mountain climber. The great Bruce McGill shows up briefly as a Treasury agent. Beautiful Janine Turner is Stallone’s girlfriend. Most of you probably remember her from NORTHERN EXPOSURE, but she’ll always be Laura Templeton from GENERAL HOSPITAL  to me. (By the way, her sister Jackie on GH was played by Demi Moore.) Ralph Waite from THE WALTONS is a helicopter pilot.

I had a really good time watching CLIFFHANGER. Is it a great film? No, it’s not, but it’s a solid action movie and I’m glad we finally got around to watching it.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Colombiana (2011)

I’ve enjoyed many of the action movies written and/or directed by Luc Besson, but I hadn’t come across this one until recently. Besson co-wrote it with Robert Mark Kamen (the guy who wrote the original Karate Kid movie), and it has a pretty simple premise: in 1994, a ten-year-old girl in Bogota, Colombia, sees her parents murdered by killers working for a cartel crime boss. She grows up and becomes a professional assassin (played at that point by Zoe Saldana) who only kills targets who actually have it coming. She’s really working to get revenge on the cartel boss responsible for her parents’ murder, who by now has moved to the United States and become an asset for the CIA. The fine character Lennie James is the FBI agent who’s on Saldana’s trail.

It's a standard but workable plot, but really it’s only there as a framework for almost non-stop action scenes. Gunfight, chase, parkour, parkour, parkour, gunfight, chase, more parkour. The thing is, it’s all very stylishly filmed, and even though it’s over the top (plenty of “Sure, why not?” moments), the cast manages to sell it. Saldana is sexy and athletic, Lennie James does a good job as the dogged investigator, and the bad guys are suitably despicable. Is that enough for a couple of hours of entertainment? It was for me.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)

That’s right. Somehow, I’ve managed to spend more than 70 years on this planet, and I’ve never seen CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON—until now.

This is another movie where there’s no need at all for me to talk about the plot. You’ve all seen it. So here are some things that struck me about this one.

This is a really well-made movie. The photography, the music, the Gillman suit, even the acting (which is sometimes not stellar in movies like this) are all top-notch. Those underwater scenes with Ricou Browning as the Gillman are just beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, Julie Adams in a seemingly endless assortment of skimpy outfits, including that iconic white one-piece swimsuit, is just breathtaking. What a lovely woman. And she turns in a decent performance, too.

Richard Denning is a good villain, although he’s not terribly villainous, just opposed to the other characters’ ideas. I like Denning. He played Mike Shayne in a one-season TV show based on Davis Dresser’s novels, and from what little I’ve seen of it, he was pretty good in the role.

One of the natives who’s killed early on by the Creature is played by Perry Lopez, who, many years later, was one of the two cops who harassed Jack Nicholson’s character in CHINATOWN. He was the less sympathetic of those two, not the one who says, “Forget it, Jake, it’s . . . Chinatown.”

Is this considered a horror movie? I always thought it was, but to me it seems to have more in common with Fifties science fiction movies like THEM! and TARANTULA.

Those are some of the things that occurred to me while I was watching this one. Mostly, though, I just enjoyed the heck out of it and wondered how in the world I managed not to see it all these years. I’m glad I finally did, because CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is just a terrific movie.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Cold Pursuit (2019)

Let me start by saying that I’m not a Liam Neeson fan. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed some of the movies he’s made (DARKMAN is a favorite), and I don’t let his presence in a film keep me from watching it. But there’s just something about the guy that rubs me the wrong way. However, I was in the mood for an action movie, and we’d never seen 2019’s COLD PURSUIT, so I figured, why not?

That turns out to have been a good choice. Neeson plays the protagonist of this movie, a snow plow driver in a small ski town in Colorado, but there are long stretches where other characters take over. Neeson’s son runs afoul of some drug smugglers and winds up dead of an apparent overdose, but he’s not convinced that’s what really happened and sets out to find the truth. When he does, he goes on a vengeance quest that gets rather convoluted with plot twists and competing gangs. And Neeson’s character has a secret in his background that makes things even more interesting.

What starts out as a pretty grim movie winds up having a lot of dry, oddball humor in it. In fact, COLD PURSUIT (which is based on a Norwegian movie) is a pretty oddball film overall. But it’s well-made, well-acted, reasonably suspenseful, and I wound up enjoying it more than I expected to. If you’re in the mood for a offbeat action movie, I recommend it.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Colette (2018)

It’ll come as no surprise to any of you that I haven’t read anything by the famous French author Colette, and I knew very little about her life. But I enjoy period dramas and I like Keira Knightley okay, so we watched COLETTE, a biopic with Knightley playing the title role. I was a little surprised by it, too, and wound up enjoying it more than I expected for one reason: it’s about ghostwriting.

You see, I had no idea that Colette’s first novels were actually ghost jobs published under her husband’s name, or rather, his pen-name Willy. As the character (played by Dominic West) says several times during the film, Willy is a brand, and it doesn’t matter who actually writes the books as long as they get written. That line really resonates with me, of course, as do the bits about trying to wrestle money that’s due out of publishers and obsessing over the number of pages and the time spent writing. I’m here to tell you, all that stuff really rings true in this movie. I’ve been in those positions many times.

Over and above that, COLETTE is a well-made, well-acted movie that’s long and leisurely but never seemed to drag much. I have no idea how historically accurate it is. I was curious enough after watching it to look up the real Colette and was surprised to find that she didn’t die until 1954, which means I was alive at the same time as her. Things like that always interest me, like knowing that when my parents were born, both Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson were still alive. In some ways, history is more recent than we think.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Cocktail (1988)

There’s no point in talking too much about the plot in this movie since all of you probably saw it more than 35 years ago. But I never did until now, so to sum up very briefly: Tom Cruise plays an ambitious young man who wants to make a million dollars in business but instead winds up a hotshot bartender in New York City. Romance and drama ensue.

A few things struck me about this one. Looking at Tom Cruise in 1988 and looking at him now, it’s obvious he ages at about one-third the rate of a normal human being. Elizabeth Shue sure was cute, even with that big Eighties hair. There’s not a cell phone in sight nor a mention of the Internet, and other than a little nudity and language, this movie could have been made in 1938 instead of 1988. All it would take is a little tweaking of Heywood Gould’s screenplay. And speaking of that screenplay, it has a great line spoken by Bryan Brown, who plays Cruise’s bartending mentor: “All things end badly, otherwise they wouldn’t end.” That’s a pretty noirish line.

Overall, I enjoyed COCKTAIL quite a bit. It’s old-fashioned, just a story meant to entertain and hold your interest without much, if any, message. And I was entertained.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Showdown at Boot Hill (1958)

SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL is another Western that I’d somehow never watched or even heard of that I saw recently. From 1958, it’s considered to be Charles Bronson’s first starring role, although I believe there’s some disagreement about that. But either way, it’s pretty obscure. Bronson plays a deputy U.S. marshal who shows up in a small town to arrest an outlaw. The ensuing shootout results in a dead owlhoot, but Bronson doesn’t care since he can collect the reward money whether his quarry is dead or alive. Unfortunately, he has to have proof that the man he killed is the same one on the reward poster he carries, and nobody in town will confirm that for the record. Because, you see, the dead man was well liked thereabouts and carried out all his crimes elsewhere.

Well, that’s an odd but intriguing setup, no doubt about that. What follows is a rather set-bound piece with a lot of talking and psychological angst (Bronson’s character became a bounty hunter because he’s short and was picked on) and a few bursts of action. The title showdown doesn’t amount to much, either.

Don’t get me wrong, though. SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL is an interesting and enjoyable little film. The black-and-white photography is excellent, the exteriors were filmed at Old Tucson, which is my favorite Old West town location, and Bronson does a good job. Veteran character John Carradine shamelessly steals the whole movie as the town’s doctor/barber/undertaker. He turns in a restrained, excellent performance, one of the best I’ve seen from him.

SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL is no lost classic, but I think it’s worth watching as an example of a 1950s psychological Western. And I’ll always watch Charles Bronson. I’m glad I finally caught up with this one.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Yaqui Drums (1956)

My dad was a fan of Rod Cameron’s Western movies, and we watched quite a few of them together on TV. I’m pretty sure, though, that I never saw or even heard of 1956’s YAQUI DRUMS. So when it aired recently on Grit, I made sure to watch it.

Cameron plays Webb Dunham, a drifter who rides into southern Arizona to take over the ranch that belonged to his late brother, who was murdered by the local range hog Matt Quigg, played by Roy Roberts. Along the way, Dunham happens to save the life of a Mexican bandit known as Yaqui Jack. Yaqui Jack is played by J. Carrol Naish at his scenery-chewing, Alfonso Bedoya-channeling best. Although he’s an outlaw, Jack pledges his loyalty and assistance to Dunham, so you know that sooner or later the two of them will team up against the evil cattle baron. The situation is complicated by a beautiful saloon singer who is Dunham’s old flame but is now engaged to Quigg’s son. On top of all this, we get Yaqui Jack trying to stage a revolution against the Mexican government with only a single Gatling gun and some Yaqui Indian followers.

This movie packs quite a bit into a running time just over an hour. It’s based on a story by old pulpster and paperbacker Paul Leslie Peil, but I don’t know if the source material was a pulp story, a novel, or a story that Peil wrote directly for Hollywood. It certainly plays like a novella from a late Forties/early Fifties Western pulp, though, which means I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Cameron was getting pretty beefy by this point in his career but still had an impressive screen presence. Roy Roberts was always a good villain. And Naish is a hoot, one of the main reasons to watch this movie.

YAQUI DRUMS was made pretty cheaply, though, and it shows. There are a few good fistfights along the way, but the big epic battle at the end consists of half a dozen of Jack’s Yaqui followers shooting at some Mexican Rurales from inside the courtyard of a hacienda. Since there are also half a dozen Rurales, and we never see the two groups at the same time, I strongly suspect that the same riding extras played both the Yaquis and the Rurales.

Despite it being made on a shoestring and having an ending that’s not as dramatic as it might have been, I enjoyed watching YAQUI DRUMS. I certainly think it’s worthwhile if you’re a Rod Cameron fan. And I think my dad would have liked it, too. At least I hope so.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Chaperone (2018)

We’re fans of the TV show DOWNTON ABBEY, so when we came across this DVD at the library that said, “From the writer and director of DOWNTON ABBEY”, we figured it might be worth watching. As it turns out, Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay, but it’s based on a novel by Laura Moriarty. And while DOWNTON ABBEY is so very British, THE CHAPERONE is pure Americana.

This movie opens in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921, as 16-year-old Louise Brooks is about to head off to New York to study at a famous dance studio. The thing is, she needs a chaperone to go with her. A local woman played by Elizabeth McGovern (Lady Grantham, Lord Grantham’s American-born wife on DOWNTON ABBEY) volunteers for the job. They head off to New York for various romances, scandals, and dramatic revelations that verge on the soap operatic. As a longtime fan of soap operas, that’s fine with me.

And I enjoyed this based-on-a-true-story drama, too. The pace is leisurely, and the tone is genteel for the most part, although some more sordid parts of life crop up every now and then. The acting and the production values are very good. I think the movie captures the time period quite well.

Although there’s a framing sequence set in the 1940s, the main story ends before Louise Brooks becomes a big star in silent movies and her career then falls apart for various reasons. It bothered me a little that there’s absolutely no mention in THE CHAPERONE that her final film was OVERLAND STAGE RAIDERS, one of the entries in the Three Mesquiteers series with John Wayne as Stony Brooke, Ray Corrigan as Tucson Smith, and Max Terhune as Lullaby Joslin. It probably won’t come as a surprise to any of you that that’s actually the only Louise Brooks movie I’ve ever seen . . .

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Butter (2011)

I never even heard of this quirky comedy about the cutthroat world of competitive butter carving in Iowa, but the cast convinced me to give it a try. Jennifer Garner is usually worth watching, and Hugh Jackman has a minor role. I’m not a fan of Olivia Wilde or Ty Burrell, but I don’t have anything against them, either. The concept seemed offbeat enough that it might be interesting.

And BUTTER is interesting. But it has a tone problem. Most of the time it seems to be trying for heartwarming Americana, but then it takes several dark, crude turns that are really jarring. What kind of movie is this, anyway? I’m not sure even the people who made it could answer that. But I have to admit, I stayed awake all the way through it, and I didn’t hate it. If you’re in the mood for an odd, obscure movie, it might do the trick.

If you want a much better small town dark comedy, though, watch 1971’s COLD TURKEY, which is also set in Iowa, by the way. I haven’t seen that in many years, but I remember it as being very good.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Bulletproof (1996)

Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler are professional car thieves. However, Wayans is actually an undercover cop and winds up having to protect Sandler so he can testify against a mob boss played by James Caan. Nobody can trust anybody. Much running, shooting, fighting, and cross-country hijinks ensue before everything works out in the end.

BULLETPROOF seems like the type of movie we would have watched when it came out back in 1996, but for whatever reason, we didn’t. It’s an okay buddy movie/road movie/action comedy but never rises above the okay level. The script moves right along but is completely predictable. I have a higher Adam Sandler threshold than a lot of people, but even I found him annoying at times in this one. But I like Damon Wayans and he and Sandler work well together for the most part. Mildly entertaining is the best this movie can do, but that’s all I expected from it so I wasn’t disappointed.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Round-Up Time in Texas (1937)

Watching old B-Western movies on TV as a kid, I always liked Gene Autry, although to be honest I preferred Roy Rogers to Gene. But the appeal of their movies was largely the same and since many of the same writers and directors and supporting actors were involved, that’s not surprising. As a result, though, there are more of Gene’s movies that I’ve never seen, or at least don’t remember.

And I think I would remember ROUND-UP TIME IN TEXAS.

This is truly a bizarre film. It opens in Texas where it’s, well, round-up time, as Gene and the cowboys who work for him are rounding up horses on his ranch. But then Gene gets a letter from his brother Tex (Ken Cooper), who’s in Africa prospecting for diamonds. It seems that Tex has discovered a fabulously valuable diamond mine but needs horses, and since there are no horses in Africa (?), he wants Gene to hop on a ship with a herd and deliver them.

So, five minutes into the movie, Gene is off to Africa (which looks just like the Republic backlot) with his sidekick Frog Millhouse (Smiley Burnette), where they clash with crooked nightclub owner Cardigan (LeRoy Mason), meet a sultry cabaret singer (Maxine Doyle) with a mysterious agenda of her own, befriend a fast-talking, shady but likable rogue (Earle Hodgins), and set out to investigate the disappearance of Gene’s brother, who’s been framed for murdering his partner in the diamond mine, which is located in the dreaded Valley of Superstition! Considering this movie runs a little less than an hour, and there has to be time for several musical numbers, too, Oliver Drake’s script really packs in the plot. Veteran director Joseph Kane knew how to keep things racing along, though. The movie devotes too much time to silliness like Frog being chased by lions and encountering a gorilla (actually fellow B-Western star and veteran Gorilla Man Ray Corrigan), as well as teaching a bunch of native kids how to sing, but we get enough fistfights and an explosive showdown at the end to keep things interesting.

If you want to put it in pulp terms, this movie is part WILD WEST WEEKLY, part JUNGLE STORIES, and all oddball. It might be a stretch to say it’s good, but it’s persistently, unexpectedly likable. I had a good time watching it, and it’s put me in the mood to watch more of Gene’s movies. Will I actually get around to it? Who knows, but we’ll see. If I do, I’m sure I’ll write about them here.

Miniseries I Missed Until Now: Buffalo Girls (1995)

There was a time when I was a big fan of Larry McMurtry’s work. This was back when I was in high school and college and he had published only a handful of novels. But those novels, especially THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, were the first ones I’d ever read that took place even partially in places where I’d been. When Sonny and Duane go to Fort Worth in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, they take the Jacksboro Highway, which meant they went within a couple of hundred yards of my house. I could stand in the street in front of the house and look down the hill to the highway and think, “Sonny and Duane drove right along there.” This immediacy and connection to my own life had a big impact on me, and I read everything by him I could get my hands on.

Then McMurtry went from being a Minor Regional Novelist (he claimed to have a T-shirt with that printed on it) to being a Big Bestseller and a Hollywood Guy, and while I still read one of his books occasionally, it was never the same after that. The kinship I’d felt with him (because I was an aspiring Minor Regional Novelist, too) was gone. Many years later, I sat at a Spur Awards banquet at the Western Writers of America convention in Fort Worth and listened to McMurtry give a long-winded acceptance speech because he won a Best Western Novel Spur for LONESOME DOVE. I maybe could have introduced myself to him later and told him I was once a big fan of his work, but nah, I was hanging around with Joe Lansdale and Scott Cupp and Bob Randisi, and that was a lot more fun.

So, speaking of long-winded, that’s why I never got around to reading McMurtry’s Calamity Jane novel BUFFALO GIRLS. They made a TV miniseries out of it in 1995, and I never watched it, either. But we came across a DVD of it at the library and thought, hey, why not? Anyway, it has Sam Elliott in it playing Wild Bill Hickok, and Sam Elliott is nearly always worth watching.

The story follows Calamity Jane from the time she’s working as a bullwhacker for the army through her time in Deadwood and finally her participation in her old friend Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show that traveled to England. As is common with McMurtry’s work, the plot strays within shouting distance of historical accuracy every now and then but doesn’t come any closer. McMurtry never worried about staying true to the facts, but I’m convinced he tried to capture the feeling of the times about which he was writing, and I’ll give him credit for that. This adaptation of BUFFALO GIRLS does capture the epic scope of the Old West and gets better as it goes along. The first half, which has all the Deadwood stuff in it, is actually a little weak, but the second half, about the Wild West Show going to England, is top-notch and very moving in places.

Anjelica Huston plays Calamity Jane. I thought at first that sounded like miscasting, but she does a fine job in the role. Sam Elliott is okay as Wild Bill but really has very litle to do. Peter Coyote plays Buffalo Bill Cody and is pretty good, although maybe not as flamboyant as he should have been. Melanie Griffith, an actress I’m not fond of, is the frontier madame Dora DuFran and came across to me as more annoying than anything else. Reba McEntire, a long-time favorite of mine, does a good job as Annie Oakley. Among fictional characters McMurtry added, the great Jack Palance and the very good character actor Tracey Walter are a couple of old mountain men and have some superb scenes, as does Floyd Red Crow Westerman as a sympathetic old Indian.

I really enjoyed watching BUFFALO GIRLS. It’s not going to make me rush out and read more of McMurtry’s books, but there are a few of them I’d still like to try. I have a copy of his Western TELEGRAPH DAYS, and I’m curious about his take on a gangster yarn, PRETTY BOY FLOYD. One of these days, maybe, if I get around to them. You know how that goes. Seldom. But now and then, it goes.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Bird (1988)

I’ve seen most of Clint Eastwood’s movies, both as star and director, over the years, but one I missed until now is BIRD, a biopic about the famous jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, who died young in the Fifties after abusing his body with drugs for many years.

Now, I’m a sucker for a good biopic, I love jazz, and Eastwood’s movies are very watchable. As a director, he reminds me of Howard Hawks: he does his job, tells his story, and gets out of the way. An Eastwood movie will never dazzle you with visual pyrotechnics.

Forest Whitaker plays Parker and does a great job. Most of the music is actual recordings of Parker and other musicians playing, but when Whitaker is on-stage, I never failed to believe it was him blowing those notes. The rest of the cast, all journeymen actors, no real stars, is also very good. The script, which jumps around quite a bit in time as it covers Parker’s life, is a little hard to follow at times, but not distractingly so. And the movie looks great. It really captures the look and feel of the Forties and Fifties and I didn’t spot any anachronisms, although that doesn’t guarantee there weren’t some I missed. And the music, oh, man, the music is great.

The problem with BIRD is that at more than two and a half hours long, and with relentlessly bleak subject matter, it’s just too much. There are a few touches of humor, but mostly it’s grim, grim, grim. Eastwood, being a noted lover of jazz and composer and musician himself, would surely disagree with me. This was clearly a passion project for him, and he did a good job and can be proud of it. But for a regular viewer like me, even though I’m a jazz fan, I’m glad I finally saw BIRD but would never watch it again. I will, however, continue listening to the music from that era because it’s pure greatness.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Beaver (2011)

Some movies, you read the description of them and think to yourself, “There’s no way in hell that’s going to work.” For example, 2011’s THE BEAVER, in which Mel Gibson plays the deeply depressed owner of a toy company who begins to talk through a beaver hand puppet and so reconnects with his wife (Jodie Foster, who also directed) and their two sons. Also, there’s a romance of sorts between the nerdy high school age son (Anton Yelchin) and a beautiful cheerleader (a very young Jennifer Lawrence). I fully expected that we’d watch maybe 30 minutes of this, tops, and then say “Nope.”

Instead, it’s kind of, well, not bad. It’s funny in places, the cast is good, and while things could have moved along a little faster, Foster’s direction holds it all together well. No matter what Mel Gibson is like in real life, I enjoy his work on-screen, and I’ve liked Foster since she was a kid in various Disney movies. THE BEAVER isn’t a great movie, but I enjoyed it enough to keep watching and wound up liking it.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Becky (2020)

Well, this movie is just about the polar opposite of the one I wrote about last week. Instead of a heart-warming, inspirational sports movie like THE BASKET, BECKY is a bloody, extremely violent thriller about a family caught in an isolated cabin by four vicious escaped convicts on a mission.

The title character, Becky, is a 13-year-old girl who’s still mourning the death of her mother a year earlier. She’s the broody, angsty sort who’s angry with her father because he’s going to get married again. The last thing she wants to do is spend a weekend at the family cabin with him and her new stepmother and stepbrother to be. Maybe not the last thing, because then the escaped convicts show up and make the situation even worse. And Becky gets a perfect opportunity to demonstrate just how mean a 13-year-old girl can be as she escapes and MacGyvers the bad guys into one deadly situation after another.

A movie like this with some plot holes in the script and a bunch of stuff that really stretches credibility relies on its cast to carry things through. Lulu Wilson, who I’d never heard of, plays Becky and does a great job of being both vulnerable and unexpectedly bad-ass. Kevin James, who I’ve liked in all his comedic roles, is cast against type as the leader of the convicts, and he’s even better as a thoroughly despicable villain. He surprised me and probably enjoyed playing evil for a change. Towering former wrestler Robert Maillet is the most sympathetic of the convicts and is also good. Joel McHale, who I usually like, plays Becky’s dad and isn’t given much of anything to do except be a jerk.

I’m not a big fan of movies that are overly violent and gory, and BECKY certainly fits that description. But it generates some genuine suspense and made me want to find out what was going to happen despite my reservations. I wound up kind of liking it and can recommend it if you don’t mind a lot of blood and if some lapses of logic don’t bother you too much. As I said about THE BASKET, I wouldn’t want a steady diet of movies like this, but BECKY is basically okay.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Basket (1999)

As you know if you’ve read this blog for very long, I’m a sucker for inspirational sports movies. THE BASKET, from 1999, has the added appeal of being a historical movie about an era and setting that haven’t been done to death. The time is shortly after World War I, the place the wheat-farming country of eastern Washington state where a small community is still feeling the effects of the war. The son of one of the local families who lost a leg during the war returns home. A new teacher takes over the local school, bringing with him some opera records and a game that’s new to most of these farming families: basketball. And two youngsters, brother and sister, who are German refugees, come to live with the local doctor.

THE BASKET is pure fiction, not based on or inspired by true events, but that won’t stop you from being able to predict everything that’s going to happen in it. Tragedy strikes, people learn and grow, and it all comes down to a big game at the end as a team of local amateurs takes on an undefeated team from the big city, Spokane. The appeal of a movie like this with a script that doesn’t contain any surprises is how well it’s executed.

In that respect, THE BASKET is pretty good. The cast is led by Peter Coyote as the new teacher and Karen Allen as the mother of the boy who loses a leg in the war. Eric Dane, who went on to star in GREY’S ANATOMY and THE LAST SHIP, looks impossibly young as one of the students. Ellen and Joey Travolta, John’s sister and brother, show up in minor roles. Nobody else is anybody you’ve ever heard of, but the whole cast does a good job. And the movie looks great, really capturing the agricultural landscape and the feel of the times.

THE BASKET isn’t a lost gem. But it’s a pleasant, relatively heartwarming way to spend a couple of hours. The older I get, the more I feel that sometimes that’s plenty for me.