Where do I start? This low budget B film is really really mean! This was made in 1951 before the really dirty villain was around in low budget westerns I thought? Maybe this film helped set the trend, the times they were changing. So what do I mean by "dirty" +++Spoilers+++ How about in the first 5 minutes crazy eye Jack Elam torches a settlers house with two pre teen boys still in it? This right after he cracks their Mom's skull with a torch making them both orphans because they had just gunned down their Dad? Now thats dirty! Then you got psychotic Lon Chaney and his really crazy daughter Myrna Dell, you do NOT want to mess around with that family! They put new meaning to the phrase "we don't take kindly to strangers"! In comes poor ol John Ireland who has vowed to never use a gun at the end of the civil war and heads out west? He couldn't gone east I guess because he never got rid of his rebel trousers? And let me tell you the first half of this film is John Ireland getting beat up and shot and then thrown in irons for murder by Wayne Morris in all his Paths Of Glory corruption as the town marshal. Dorothy Malone is the hot good girl daughter of the newspaper editor who also packs a gun, I mean everybody is gun crazy (except John Ireland), and they have quick trigger fingers too! The film poster linked here (actually a DVD cover) is that of Myrna Dell who's the blond in this film and because she's a psycho and she has 20 gun men to back her up. The story may be very clichéd but the out right ruthlessness of the bad guys and utter corruption of the whole town for a 1951 film raise this film up several notches. I'm giving it a 7 out 10, it doesn't deserve higher because it's cheaply made but it's very entertaining. I had this film in a 50 movie pack set for "War" films from Millcreek that I got off of Amazon. The print is pretty bad I see that since it's a public domain film that it's available on archive, youtube and hulu now so try them out, the print is probably better. Don't be getting Bushwhacked now, you hear?!
Review of The Bushwhackers
