Serial of the Month: Desperadoes of the West
The merits of Republic serials from the 1950’s is always a cause for debate among fans. Proponents for that era feel they are superior to the previous post war years (roughly ‘46 -’49) due to having stronger actors in the leading roles , where before actors like Richard Bailey and George Turner were hired more for their resemblance to the company’s stunt men than for their thespian qualities, while the fifties had stronger leading men like Myron Healy and Richard Simmons. Opponents feel that the serials are not as good as the post war years due to recycled plots and footage from previous serials.
Desperadoes of the West (1950), is a perfect example of both sides. The lead is a known and popular leading man but the plot is a recycled western story done countless times by the studio and the scriptwriters and director do not add anything distinctive to the productiion.
The story opens with J.B. “Dude” Dawson (I. Standford Jolley) riding in a stagecoach when it is held up by outlaws Hacker (Roy Barcroft) and Larson (Lee Roberts). Dawson hides most of his money and his watch in the coach and after they take what little he allowed them to have chases them down with one of the coach horses under the guise of trying to get is money back. Actually he chases them down and offers them jobs working for him for a lot of money and even more to come.
When Dawson arrives in town, the story of his “failure” to run down the hold up men has gotten around town and everyone now thinks of him as a not too bright Easterner, something Dawson likes to perpetuate so that they don’t discover what he is really doing. Going to the saloon Dawson makes the acquaintance of Ward Gordon (Tom Keane, billed here as Richard Powers), who has formed a co-op with wheelchair bound Colonel Arnold (Cliff Clark) to drill an oil well. Dawson offer to buy Ward’s lease at a good price but Ward and the rest of the co-op members aren’t interested in selling.
To cover up his next move, Dawson opens an oil lease office to sell leases on other areas to people who want to try their luck. Dawson had had some reports of Ward’s well sent to him back East so he knows how close the co-op is to a major strike. The building that houses Dawson’s office used to belong to a smuggler friend of Dawson’s, and it has a secret back entrance that Hacker uses to meet with Dawson for the next step in their operation to steal the well.
Everyone knows that Bryant (Holly Bane), the head driller at the well, is a heavy drinker with a quick temper. Hacker and Larson easily goad the drunken man into a fight, Ward and his sidekick Rusty (Lee Phelps) enter the saloon at just that moment and try to cool everyone down. Hacker attacks Ward while Rusty holds off Bryant. After the saloon furniture is completely destroyed by Hacker and Ward, Bryant manages to break away from Rusty. Pulling his gun, Bryant starts drunkenly shooting it off at no particular target and is gunned down by Larson. When the Sheriff (Harold Goodwin) arrives, all the witnesses agree that it was a justifible shooting so Hacker and Larson are allowed to go on their way.
Ward and Rusty ride out the Colonel’s farmhouse and tell him about Bryant’s death. Arnold happens to know of another driller who may be available and has his neice Sally (Judy Clark) cable him immediately. Dawson of course overhears about the man’s arrival from the local gossip at the saloon and dispatches Hacker and Larson to take care of him.
Hacker and Larson waylay the new driller and kill him. After hiding the body they give the dead man’s papers to confederate Bowers (Edmund Cobb), who then goes to meet Ward and Sally. Sally actually knows the driller’s brother and asks about him, Bowers tries to bluff his way through the questions, but his answers raise some suspicions with Sally.
Sally voices her suspicions to Ward when they get to the drilling site, who decides to search the wagon Bowers rode in on. Knowing the jig is up, Bowers attacks Ward. Hacker had been trailing the group, sees the fight and shoots at the two combatants. Bowers drops to the ground, obviously shot. Ward jumps on his horse and chases after Hacker, but loses him in the brush and heads back to the rig.
While this is going on, Bowers, who had been faking getting shot, jumps up and grabs the dynamite he had hidden in his wagon. Racing to the rig, he plants the charge and lights the fuse. Ward rides up and jumps off his horse onto Bowers. The two continue their fight, ending up in a nearby tent. The dynamite goes off, causing the rig to collapse, where it falls on the nearby tent…….
Can’t say that I am a big fan of this serial. It isn’t a great serial and it isn’t a bad serial. It’s just an okay serial. The plot is rather pedertrian, just some bad guys trying to steal an oil well. A plot that was a mainstay in Republic Western features, which ironically is where some of the footage for the serial came from, espeically a sequence in Chapter 8 where the rig is attacked by the whole gang and, surprisingly, acton star Dennis Moore plays a cowardly engineer.
The same is true for the action, most of which was recycled from King of the Texas Rangers (1941) and Zorro’s Black Whip (1944) among others. The one exception is the cliffhanger and resolution of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, where the hero is seen to fall off a balcony toward a burning wagon and is shown to just miss it by the merest of inches (I’m pretty sure his stunt double got singed during the shooting). It is so good you wish there had been more of stunts like that in the rest of the production. The real reason to watch this serial is to see popular actors going through their paces.
Powers is a good lead, with a strong personality. He is very forceful on screen and gives off a real feeling of steely determination that grows with each set back. A really good scene is Chapter 10 when he gets framed for murder and his frustrated exasperation with the stubborn Sheriff allows Keene to flesh out his standdard heroic character.
Lee Phelps is a good compliment to Keene as the comedy relief sidekick. Though a little too old and out of shape to make some of his action sequences believable, most notably his leap from a horse to the back of a wagon during a chase in Chapter 2, he more than makes up for it with some clever comedy bits. A running gag is his ordering lemonade in the saloon and his dignified reaction to the bartender’s disbelief. My favorite bit is in Chapter 7 when after another fight in the saloon, this time with agitator Dale Van Sickel, the workers are wanting to quit because of a rumor that Keene can’t meet the coming payroll. Phelps “borrows” the poker winnings from an unconscious Van Sickel and displays the bills to trick the men into returning to work. When Keene asks him where he got the money, Phelps whines, “Why do you have to go and ask that, it worked didn’t it?” The closing bit of the serial where Phelps tries to light a table lamp filled with crude oil is good for a few chuckles too.
Henchmen Roy Barcroft and Lee Roberts change things up with this pair of outlaws. Where usually you have one hot head and one laid back villain here you two similar thugs. They’re both tough and nasty criminals who take sadistic delight in their work. A stand out scene is in Chapter 4 where they capture Keene and Phelps and are trying to force mountain man Hank Patterson into signing his right of way through Dawson’s land over to them, so the heroes can’t use it, by tying Keene’s hands with wet rawhide and leaving him in the sun. The cheerful way they discuss how the the rawhide with sheer off Keene’s hands as it shrinks is a more chilling moment than you usually get in such late era serials.
I. Standford Jolley gives the best performance of his career. After years of being a minor heavy in countles serials, here he is the big villain and plays it for all he’s worth. His dignified and dandyish appearance disguises a cruel ruthlessness as he dispassionately issues oders to kill people. He is also effective in his eavesdropping scenes where his sinsiterly squinted eyes shift back and forth as he hears the information and immediately starts plotting how he can use it. Most interesting is as the serial progresses and Jolley’s machinations are becoming more obvious, he drops all pretense of just being a businessman trying to make a deal and doesn’t care if appears guilty, he knows they have no proof of his villainy and starts to openly try and take over their well by legal means while his men keep them from moving forward with their drilling. Chapter 11 has him showing up at the well trying to broker a deal between Keene and an oil company executive,where Keene and Jolley are both openly hostile to each other. But this turns out to be just another ruse on Jolley’s part where he has his men attack the well so he can sabotage it from inside their defences before they hit their strike.
Judy Clark offers little to the serial besides a pretty face. She is given less to do here than she did in Columbia’s Bruce Gentry (1949), where there she was at least involved in the story and was regualrly put in danger during the cliffhangers. With few exceptions, in Desperadoes she spent most of her screen time at the farm house taking care of Cliff Clark. It’s as if she was included only because the producers felt all Republic serials had to have a female main character.
I know this serial has many supporters on the message boards, but I found it to be a lackluster production over all, and feel it is for Republic completetists only.
