"There were only three things Bill Patton was afraid of," Yakima Canutt once remarked. "Guns, horses and the outdoors." In this movie, oddly enough, Patton uses his fears as a basis for comedy. Unfortunately, the attempt doesn't quite come off, thanks to insipid direction from Horace B. (for Boring) Carpenter and a script of little interest from the same gentleman. Condensed to two reels, the movie would still inspire a minimal involvement, but expanded to five, it's a real wash-out. All the extra characters that Carpenter so laboriously introduces in the first ten minutes or so, are given virtually nothing to do, and none of them are played with any charisma whatever, although Miss Donald is photographed far more attractively here than in Carpenter's later effort, "Just Travelin'". That movie did have the benefit of eye-catching tints, but this one labors along in dull and heavy black-and-white. But I liked the iris effects.
I won't attempt to write a synopsis of the story, because my impression is radically different from that of the Press Sheet. Maybe I fell asleep. Or maybe Mr Carpenter regarded that synopsis as merely a starting point and wrote in deviations while shooting. In any event, I found McCormick's laughably hirsute villain far more entertaining than the forever ruminating, incorrigibly white-faced hero, Bill Patton.
I won't attempt to write a synopsis of the story, because my impression is radically different from that of the Press Sheet. Maybe I fell asleep. Or maybe Mr Carpenter regarded that synopsis as merely a starting point and wrote in deviations while shooting. In any event, I found McCormick's laughably hirsute villain far more entertaining than the forever ruminating, incorrigibly white-faced hero, Bill Patton.