Bad Lands (1939)

I love this movie so much

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Perfect cast and a good story

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

One would think that if a reviewer that knows the name and face of an actor in a film (when he is seen), then such reviewers would not go to great lengths in adding little tidbits about that actor, in their review, when that actor...John Payne...is not in the film. John Payne did not play "Apache Jack" in this film. That role was played by a one-and-done actor named Jack Payne. Perhaps those reviewers that pointed out the fabrication John Payne is in this film would go back and edit their reviews. But, the chances are very high that, rather than delete/correct their reviews, they will just mark this with a 'don't like'. Be my guest.

I watched Bad Lands on TCM during the wee hours this morning and was favorably impressed with this remake of 1934's The Lost Patrol, so like it in many ways, however this time in a Wild West setting.I found it enjoyable to watch many 30's & 40's villains play against type as heroes instead of their usual nasties. On the other hand Noah Beery, Jr. to my knowledge, played a bad guy for the only time in his film career. Noah was not the son of actor Wallace Beery, but of noted silent screen villain Noah Beery, Sr., Wallace's brother.Anyone notice that actor Douglas Walton played in both Lost Patrol and Bad Lands? In Patrol he was the first of Sgt. Victor McLaglen's troopers to die, while somehow in Bad Lands he managed to be the last of Sheriff Robert Barrat's posse to bite the dust. One might say this to have been poetic justice, I suppose.Oh yes, I wish to mention 6-footer John Payne,outrageously miscast as the Indian, Apache Jack. Let's face it: Geronimo he was not.

Apacheria Land of the Apaches is the setting for this remake of the Lost Patrol which was set in... Iraq! Here frontier characters duel the Apaches and each other for survival in a merciless landscape. Except for the setting and the Americanization of the characters it is a scene by scene retelling of John Ford's film. The cast members are all familiar faces film character actors with the emphasis on actor instead of Star. The film was probably a second feature tryout for its director and some cast members. Solid but not top drawer. A nice change would've been showing the warriors of Apache Jack's band of renegades reactions to their own losses. This film and it's predecessors the Ford film and the Soviet film that may have inspired them Ten would be seen in Zoltan Korda's Sahara with Humphrey Bogart, The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, Duel at Diablo,and Ulzana's Raid.

A topnotch ensemble cast and brilliant photography by Frank Redman make this little-known RKO western a sleeper that can only be compared to John Ford's Stagecoach, released the same year.A posse pursues Apache Jack (played by John Payne) into the dessert, in a western variation of The Lost Patrol. The result is a nice variety of types played by veteran -- and up-and-coming -- character actors.While Ford had begun using Monument Valley at this time, this movie was shot at Mount Whitney -- after seeing it in a hundred movies from Gunga Din, released the same year, on downward, you get so you can recognize the boulders. But while the prints of Ford's movie are pretty battered, this one is nearly pristine: the beautiful shadows producing shots like Hurrell portraits. See what a black and white movie is supposed to look like!So this goes to the top of my list of sleepers. If you get a chance to see it, do so and let me know what you think.