Treachery Rides the Range (1936) User Reviews

Foran Gets Buffaloed!

[bsmith5552 · 6/10 · 27 June 2018]

"Treachery Rides the Range" was another in Dick Foran's Singing Cowboy series for Warner Bros. This time he is a cavalry officer Red Taylor (Tyler in the opening credits). Quality assurance anyone?

The film opens with Captain Red Taylor (Foran) and the troop belting out a rousing Nelson Eddy type song as they ride towards the Indian village to negotiate a peace treaty. Colonel Drummond (Monte Blue) negotiates the treaty with Chief Red Smoke (Jim Thorpe) whereby buffalo hunters are barred from hunting buffalo on Indian lands.

Buffalo hunters Carter (Craig Reynolds) and Barton (Henry Otho) have just signed a lucrative contract with eastern buyers to provide buffalo meat and hides. Carter tries, without success, to convince Col. Drummond to allow him access to the Indian lands where the buffalo roam.

Carter sends his men dressed in cavalry uniforms to the Indian village to entice the chief to come to the fort earlier than had been agreed upon. The chief sends his two sons, Little Wolf (Carlyle Moore Jr. ) and Little Fox (Frank Bruno) instead. The two Indians are shot down by Carter's men. Little Fox is killed but Little Fox survives and returns to the village. Predictably, the Indians go on the warpath.

Taylor and his troop ride into an ambush and are wiped out all but (you guessed it) Taylor. Taylor returns to the fort and volunteers to ride ahead to warn Col. Drummond's daughter Ruth ( Paula Stone) to turn back from her planned visit. Taylor reaches the stagecoach in time and they turn back to Dodge City. Determined to reach her father, Ruth arranges with Carter to accompany his train as far as the fort. Taylor is incensed at the idea, but she goes anyway.

At a relay station, Carter's expedition is attacked by Indians and Ruth is taken prisoner and.........................................................................

There's plenty of action in this Foran oater. We have Indian attacks, a buffalo stampede, plenty of fisticuffs and gunplay before the bad guys are brought to justice. Foran sings three forgettable songs including the opening cavalry march, a crooning to Stone in a stage coach and the finale as the principals ride into the sunset.

Others in the cast include Bud Osborne, Monte Montague and Tom Wilson as various henchmen.

Buffalo Hunters Stirring Up the Indians

[bkoganbing · 3/10 · 19 September 2006]

Just when things get peaceful between the Comanche and the white man, some buffalo hunters get to stirring things up.

Henry Otho and Craig Reynolds have a buffalo hunting business and new treaties with the Comanche guarantee the buffalo's survival on their reservation. That's going to put them out of business so the Indians have to go on the warpath.

Shooting the chief's sons should do the trick and to make sure, have your men wear cavalry uniforms. The chief, famous Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe, falls for the scheme.

It takes army captain and son of former Indian agent Dick Foran to straighten the whole thing out. That is with some time for a couple of songs to romance the daughter of post commandant Monte Blue, Paula Stone.

Foran was in his Warner Brothers period as their singing cowboy answer to Roy, Gene, and Tex. No memorable songs here, although the film does start out with the cavalry riding out of the fort led by Foran singing like Nelson Eddy with his Mountie chorus. Well if it worked for MGM..........

"Say, the only good Injun's a dead Injun."

[rmax304823 · 22 July 2011]

This is a routine B movie from 1936, cheaply made and with no bankable stars, and mercifully short.

Well, I guess people might have heard of Dick Foran, the cavalry captain who is part Cheyenne and mediates between his people and the army. He gets to sing a song in a pleasant baritone while riding in a stagecoach with the commanding officer's daughter -- "The Good Folks of Home." Probably they heard of Jim Thorpe too, champion all-around athlete turned bit player and alcoholic. Thorpe was seen to lesser advantage as the tall Indian who dances arm in arm with a wary Ward Bond in John Ford's "Wagon Train." If this movie does nothing else it adds a quantum of correction to the run-of-the mill Westerns of the day, those in which the faceless Indians were bloodthirsty and sneaky. It doesn't ENNOBLE the Indians, don't get me wrong. The writer is William Jacobs not Jean-Jacques Rousseau. And the script isn't politically correct, either, since, like the atom bomb, this terrifying and destructive force hadn't yet been unleashed. It's just that the Cheyenne are fundamentally decent and worthy of trust. And, though the script has them riding in circles around a band of trapped white guys (who are fighting each other over who gets to rape the virginal daughter of the commanding officer), they're not particularly stupid either. Despite the somewhat alien customs of the Cheyenne, they're about as good as anybody else around. I found them easy to get along with anyway, and I lived with them for a while as an anthropologist.

The kids might get a kick out of this movie. The logic behind the narrative is simple -- bad guy wants to get rid of the Indians so he can shoot all the buffalo -- while the army and the Indians must observe the treaty. Oh, it's old -- true -- and it's in black and white, but there's a lot of action, minimal romance, a colossal fist fight in which two stunt men batter each other with chairs that splinter into a million pieces. Seen from an adult's point of view -- it merits a shrug.