Riders of the Sage (1939) User Reviews

"The next time I see ya, this gun'll do the talking".

[classicsoncall · 4/10 · 20 October 2010]

Well this is kind of an odd Western. Bob Steele, dressed in black and riding a white horse, is nominally the film's good guy hero and arrives on the scene at the request of the Martin family to help do battle against the Halseys. However I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe Poe Powers (Ted Adams) was the top gun here, mentioned in the story as the most feared man in the territory and sort of a Robin Hood to the locals. It was Powers' group that rode to the rescue at the end of the story, and Poe himself who wrapped the film up with the leading lady (Claire Rochelle as Mona Halsey).

But I did learn one thing. In the old West, you had to make do with whatever you had in an emergency. When Bob Burke (Steele) comes upon Steve Reynolds (Jimmy Aubrey) with a gunshot wound, they came up with an on the spot surgery procedure by way of a jack-knife, screwdriver and pliers. And all without a medical degree!

You know, I always get a kick out of this when I see it happen. Steele's character confronts a couple of the Halsey henchmen, and proceeds to shoot their guns out of their hands. Problem is, one of the guys was holding it directly in front of his body, almost in front of his face. So how did Bob Burke's bullet miss hitting the villain? I could never figure that one out. If you ever watch a Lone Ranger episode, watch for the same maneuver, he does it all the time.

For a final oddity, check out Burke's actions during the final shootout against the bad guys. All of a sudden, he rushes two of the baddies from behind and starts fist fighting them! Really? That seemed a little over ambitious for me, even if they wanted to get this one in the can in under an hour. But here's the kicker - for a good part of the time, Burke was trying to locate Tom Martin (Dave O'Brien) who was kidnapped by the Halseys and tied up in their cabin. Burke makes the save, but guess what? - Martin never makes an appearance again!!! What??!!

Oh the farmer and the cowman should be friends....

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 9 December 2017]

Not so much bad as just dull and poorly made, this Z grade Western features unemotional performances and a script that often feels like a pile of Western scripts got jumbled together and the secretary didn't take time to put them back together properly. Bob Steele, a popular star among western fans (even today), is embarrassingly bad as the wandering cowboy who somehow ends up in a range war between sheep farmers and cow herders. Pretty lame overall, it features a feisty performance by Claire Rochelle, but other than her, it's not worthy past the usual action, gunfights and stereotypes. A lot of padding seems to have been done to stretch this to feature length, and the version that I saw was nearly a reel shorter than the full length version.

Technically speaking, it's probably the most incompetent western Bob Steele made.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 13 July 2015]

"Riders of the Range" is a terrible B-western, and it's a shame as I usually love Bob Steele films and have watched most of his films. But I could not get past the sheer incompetence of the production-- it is third-rate throughout and looks like a movie made by complete amateurs. For example, when the film begins you see a lot of random stock footage accompanied by music that doesn't even come close to fitting the action. Then, out of the blue, you're treated to "Swannee River" with its racist lyrics as a prologue appears on the screen. While I don't particularly care for this sort of exposition explaining the film, this movie really cocked it up, as throughout the movie it was interrupted by these textual explanations as to what was happening, who was involved and the like. It was almost like seeing intertitle cards on an old silent film! The bottom line is that I really wonder if the studio (if you could call it that) just took footage from various Steele films and spliced them together--along with the explanatory text. It's a dull and inept film, full of scenes that might just have been made up of retakes and scrapped footage.

My Number One Candidate for Worst "B" Western Of All Time!

[JohnHowardReid · 1/10 · 25 September 2009]

Bob Steele is one of my favorite "B" heroes, but this farrago (there's no way you could call it a motion picture) ranks as my number one candidate for Worst Western of All Time. The editing, both visual and sound, is totally inept, the script amateurish, the direction abysmal. No wonder both Carleton Young and Jimmy Aubrey chose to hide their contributions under pseudonyms. Admittedly, hero Bob Steele does his best, but his is a hopeless struggle against overwhelming Poverty Row odds in the rags and tatters of director/producer Harry S. Webb's z-grade "presentation". The heroine, Claire Rochelle, is really hard done by. Not only does her role make little sense, but she is unflatteringly costumed and photographed in this tired, juvenile and oddly fragmented story which proceeds at a snail's pace to its inevitable conclusion via an inept series of jerks and jumps, which are themselves interrupted by unexpected full-screen inter-titles.

This One Could Have Been Better

[StrictlyConfidential · 3/10 · 28 September 2021]

"Riders Of The Sage" was originally released back in 1939.

Anyway - As the story goes - A Missouri family of Confederate sympathizers has been aiding the Confederate raiders operating in the area by providing valuable information about Union activities. A Union contingent, aided by a Native American guide with a grudge against the family, is given the hard task of tracking down the family and stopping them.