The Man from Tumbleweeds (1940)

Must See Movie...

Memorable, crazy movie

Fresh and Exciting

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Gordon Elliott became Wild Bill Elliott and was generally a good cowboy and generally his name meant an at least pretty good movie."The Man from Tumbleweeds" is barely a pretty good movie.It was populated by some great cowboy performers, and even Dub "Cannonball" Taylor wasn't over the top.But it was awfully slow.The story, the premise was a good one, but somehow, despite some very good scenes and some good dialogue, ultimately it was rather lame, even trite.Everything was fairly predictable, except there was not a final blood-bath as might be expected in a low-budget movie.If you're a Western fan, you do want to see it, and I hope you like it better than this review might lead you to. It's available in a somewhat out of focus print at YouTube.

With that phrase Wild Bill Elliott playing Wild Bill Saunders again states why he just can't settle down in any one place. Elliott's Saunders character is a Lone Ranger without a mask, going all over the west, righting whatever wrongs there are in a given area.In this case Elliott gets a commission from Governor Don Beddoe no less when he sells him on the idea of establishing a state ranger force. Local law enforcement is unable to deal with roving gangs of outlaws who jump from county to county. Elliott even sells Beddoe on the idea of paroling some hard cases from the state penitentiary to clean up a certain really bad gang who murdered freighter Edward LeSaint in front of his daughter Iris Meredith. Get this bunch and a pardon might be in the offing and these paroled convicts the nucleus for a permanent state rangers.One thing really kind of got me. Granted that this film is for the Saturday matinée crowd of kids. But are we really surprised when one of Elliott's parolees turns out to be a double agent when he's got a nickname of Shifty? These films are never known for subtlety.I'm sure the kids in gallery got their money's worth from The Man From Tumbleweeds.

There's lots of six-gun action and hard riding with more intrigue than usual for a matinée entry. Crime boss Kilgore is pillaging the state until Wild Bill arrives to head up a ranger force recruited from the state prison. Everybody's got a sneaky plan to nail the opposition. Add a tricky informant who goes back and forth between the sides, and you may need a scorecard.Elliot is really good at being tough and even downright mean when the occasion calls for it. In my book, he's one of the few matinée heroes who could also play a bad guy as well as a good. Here, however, he stays pretty nice, but is still convincing as the head ranger. Pretty girl Meredith gets more plot than usual for pretty girls and even gets to sling a gun at the bad guys.Of course, no one expects high drama from these matinée specials. Still, this one's notable for its cult director, Joseph H. Lewis, who was clearly perfecting his technique with crashing windows and complex plots. Too bad the action itself never gets out of the scrubby LA area, but Lewis makes good use of what he's got. Okay, this former Front Row kid still looks at these oaters with 12-year old eyes, so I'm probably not the best critic. But I still think it delivers the goods for old time fans.

The Man from Tumbleweeds (1940)The claim to fame here is slight--it's directed by Joseph H. Lewis, later famous for some inventive, raw low budget movies like "Gun Crazy" (1951). It is directed with his usual fast, visual panache, though he's inexperienced here and it shows. The script is pretty routine, too, and so when the dialog intrudes, it intrudes.But it's fast, there are several turns of events, one of the main characters is a woman sheriff, and there are lots of gun fights, horse chases, double crossing, and broad black and white landscape. I liked it more than I should have, and it's partly how really well it was directed. With better actors and better dialog, this would easily be memorable.This is one in a series of one hour Westerns starring actor Bill Elliott, a sheriff who loved to be violent to bring in the bad guys, and would say, "Some folks call me Wild Bill. But I'm a peaceable man." It's the only Elliott film Lewis directed.Elliott was an Old West kind of character himself, and was the lead in several movie (low budget) serials, playing detective Gordon Elliott in some 28 of them, then a turning point came when Elliott (as Gordon Elliott) played Wild Bill Hickcok, the historical figure as portrayed in the 1938 movie. After this he played in Westerns for two decades. In the first four in the series, he played Wild Bill Saunders, and this is the third of them, all for Columbia Pictures. Then he switched to the more famous Wild Bill Hickcock himself for 12 films. When he moved to Republic pictures he starred as himself, Wild Bill Elliott.Should you see this? Why not? It's nothing much, but it's not bad, if you like Westerns of this sort. Any John Ford movie is better, of course, but this short and exciting. Oh, and don't be fooled by the opening credit that says Hygo Television Films--that was added for the 1953 re-release for t.v.