Kansas Raiders

Kansas Raiders was an opportunity for Universal-International to display some of its young contract players of the time to see who might have some career potential. In terms of career longevity all of them had varying degrees of success.

With Audie Murphy as young Jesse James and Richard Long as brother Frank with Tony Curtis as Kit Dalton and James Best and Dewey Martin as the Younger Brothers we see them all as young guns during the Civil War from Missouri all joining up with William Quantrill to raid, plunder, and pillage the west.

Quantrill has never really gotten a revisionist view from either history or Hollywood. He's a murdering skunk who's using the Civil War as cover for what he would be doing in civilian life anyway. But he's probably seen in the best Hollywood light possible in this film.

Brian Donlevy in this very confused story is as bad as they come, but he does take a kind of fatherly interest in all these young men who've come to join up with him. That's the problem with Kansas Raiders, Quantrill's character is so badly written you can't understand why all those young potential outlaws see in him.

Definitely for fans of the above named players only.