Border Badmen (1945)

Very best movie i ever watch

Sorry, this movie sucks

Simply Perfect

Excellent adaptation.

BORDER BADMEN is a very cheap black and white western with a starring role for former FLASH GORDON Buster Crabbe. He plays one of a cowboy duo who help out a female landowner from the crooks trying to steal her estate. This one clocks in at under an hour in length and has the usual plot ingredients, with a lot of horse riding and a handful of fight scenes. The broad-chested Crabbe makes for a charismatic hero but there's simply not as much to get excited or amused about here as in his science fiction pictures.

As the music of "Home on the Range" breaks out under the opening credits, we know we are in for another nostalgic delight. The plot may be a familiar variation on a very old theme – the use of some of Lou Costello's routines from Hold That Ghost (1941) is an unexpected novelty – and the dialogue may be atrociously clichéd, but the support cast is headed by such welcome old friends as Charles King and Al Ferguson. Even the direction by good old Sam ("Don't call me, Sam, call me, Fast") Newfield is a notch above his usual score of three or four out of ten. The two femme leads are rather innocuous (I saw the film only an hour ago, and already I've forgotten what they look like, whereas people like Henry Hall, I remember well, despite his extremely brief innings on center stage) and the occasional action sequences are well and truly outnumbered by the inordinate amount of footage allocated to Mr. St. John (who appeared in 337 movies, would believe? He also had a career as a writer and a director in silent days). Maybe one of his fans can tell me how he pronounced his name. I assume it was the American way, but I'm not sure. In the U.K. the name is pronounced "Sinjin".

Border Badmen had the potential to be an pretty decent "B" western. Multiple heirs, secret chambers, and impersonations make the plot a step above the usual. Unfortunately, Fuzzy St. John single handedly brings this down to the level of the ridiculous. I don't have overly high expectations for a "B" western but his antics just made this movie painful to watch. I compare any movie against all others I've seen, not just against their budget equals. That puts this movie up against movies like N by NW, Schindler's List, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc. With a Gabby Hayes and without St. John's "humor", this might have made it to a 3. As it is, this was pretty excruciating and among the biggest dogs I've watched. 1/10.

This isn't bad for a 40's B-western. One thing I liked was that the villains weren't as cliched as most are in this genre, and the plot (inheritance fraud) was a nice change of pace from the usual revenge/robberies formulas. The comic relief was actually pretty good too, unlike most of its contemporaries (i.e., annoying).For me though, two things let the film down. First, occasionally the script has some really dumb lines (e.g., "I wonder what they want with the identification papers"). Second, the villains give up way too easily after all the trouble they've gone through. Were it not for these shortcomings of the script, this would have been a good film; as it stands, it is only above average.6/10