The Bad Man (1941)

Just perfect...

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Trombonehead got one thing wrong: Wallace Beery's "Mexican" accent is not the worst of all time. It's only third worst.Lafe McKee probably should have been shot for his in some small Western, the name of which I can't remember, and Marlon Brando's, in "Viva Zapata" was the second worst.Other, though, than his poor accent, Berry's characterization is pretty funny, although it doesn't seem to translate well from the stage to the screen.Lionel Barrymore was rather -- and I apologize for the cliché -- over the top, but he had some great lines and characterization.Ronald Reagan, in an unusual loan-out from Warners, looked great, and did a very good job as the hero. Laraine Day looked great, too, and was mostly quite believable.Tom Conway is another under-rated actor, and his role was rather thankless, but he looked and sounded very good.Chris-Pin Martin, on the other hand, was outstanding ... although he nearly always was. Whenever he was on screen, he drew the viewer's attention. He was a great talent.In his mini-bio, Gary Brumburgh calls Nydia Westman "adorable." That says it perfectly. She stood out in every scene she was in.Perhaps the reason so many commenters here rate this film low is that it seems to start out as a serious Western, and that it is really a comedy doesn't become apparent till later.I'll admit it took me a while to realize it, but when I found myself laughing at, especially, Barrymore's "shoot him" and other extreme comments, I finally caught on.I seriously recommend the people who didn't like this to give it another chance; and anyone who hasn't seen it, I urge you to do so.

The Bad Man is a showcase for the talents of two of the biggest scene stealers in the history of film, Wallace Beery and Lionel Barrymore. With those two around the rest of the cast didn't have a chance.This is the fourth remake of this story, including both a silent film and the plot relocated to revolutionary China for a version starring Boris Karloff. Since we haven't seen another version for almost seventy years, I think we can assume this will be the last one.Lionel Barrymore and his nephew Ronald Reagan are trying to make a go of a broken down border ranch which if they're not dealing with raids by Mexican bandit Wallace Beery, they've got a skinflint banker in Henry Travers who's holding the mortgage and wants it paid in full. He's got a notion there's oil on the property and is looking for oil man Tom Conway to develop it. Complicating matters is Conway's wife Laraine Day who really loves Reagan.Everything gets changed in their lives when Beery comes a calling. He even gets Nydia Westman together with cowhand Chill Wills, mainly to keep her away from him. The film is tailor made for the personalities of Beery and Barrymore. Beery simply dusted off the persona of Pancho Villa from seven years earlier and went to town. Barrymore's played old coots like this, lovable and not so lovable, a gazillion times in the film. While Ronald Reagan was at Warner Brothers, this was the only film that Jack Warner lent him to another studio for. I remember when Reagan was president saying something like if he could handle Wallace Beery stealing scenes, he was ready for Brezhnev. Personally I think he was better dealing with Brezhnev.The Bad Man is an easy to take film, very amusing in spots, but it helps to be a fan of either Wallace Beery or Lionel Barrymore.

I don't know if I'll ever see another Wallace Beery picture as bad as this one. I hope not, but I'm sure he made some other dogs. Usually Beery can be counted on to bring the laughs, and do something memorable with his character.Beery's is not the worst performance in this piece (that distinction belongs to Lionel Barrymore, obviously loathe to be in this production and cantankerously chewing the scenery with noisy and irritating aplomb like nowhere else on his filmography) but he offers little more than updating his Pancho Villa schtick from Viva Villa. Not much originality or send-up in his performance and he doesn't even appear until around the 30 minute mark. He does look cartoonishly amusing galloping away with the Mexican Federales in hot pursuit though.This really isn't a funny comedy or a watchable western. At 70 minutes it feels overlong. Everyone stands in one spot and talks endlessly, Ronald Reagan does the hero bit with his usual one dimensional panache, Barrymore won't shut up, and the oppressive sepia tone this was shot in kind of makes you queasy by the end. Chill Wills at least is his usual lovable self as Reagan's sidekick.Definitely not a Beery classic

A curious, inconsistent hodgepodge from the start, this picture appears for a time to be an altogether conventional, cliche-ridden Western, despite its "A" cast. What drama exists in the story is compounded by the late arrival of the film's nominal star (top billing), Wallace Beery, reprising his Pancho Villa characterization under a different name. At first a danger and a menace to the good folks, the character gradually - but none too subtly - becomes a caricature, a mercurial buffoon difficult to take seriously. After the plot is resolved by a familiar turn or two, the picture ends with a ludicrous scene of Lionel Barrymore in a wheelchair being towed at considerable speed across the prairie by Beery on horseback. As a Western, the picture is totally undistinguished. Its comic elements, such as they are, generate exceedingly feeble humor. Among the few positives: Ronald Reagan gives a winning low-key performance as a gentle cowhand, Lionel Barrymore chews every bit of scenery in sight, and Nydia Westman is impressive in a quirky minor role. But when all is said and done, it is not easy to figure out exactly what kind of picture this was supposed to be - or, for that matter, why it was made.