OK, what am I overlooking here? At one point in the story, Sheriff Rob Saunders (Jock Mahoney) was about to arrest his father (Edgar Dearing) and put him in jail when suddenly the Durango Kid knocks the sheriff out and brings the father to jail! What??!!
Well stuff like this happens a lot in these old time Western flicks and I've learned pretty much to just go with it, but that was one of the more unusual ones. Backing up a bit, this is one of those stories involving water rights and who controls what and how is the hero going to resolve things favorably for all those concerned. Actually, even though this is a Durango Kid picture, it's his alter-ego Steve Brandon that does most of the investigative work and makes the final save to close out the story. Charles Starrett handles a very athletic stunt near the end of the picture where he leaps head first through a cabin window, does a somersault and gets the drop on bad guy Burch (Chuck Roberson). Very cool.
As is often the case in a Durango Kid movie, Smiley Burnette shows up to help out, this time in the guise of a traveling bathtub salesman. For those who aren't familiar with Smiley, he usually rode a horse named Ring Eye, because the horse had a ring around his eye. Not a natural one of course, it was a painted circle around the horse's right eye. Well the gimmick is extended here as Smiley rides into town with two horses pulling his bathtub wagon, and both have ring eyes. He calls them Ma and Pa, but later on when he needs them to giddy-up, he calls them Bill and Mort, so I don't know how that would work.
There's another gimmick more central to the story in which the general storekeeper Norton (Raymond Bond), who's calling the shots for the bad guys, tricks out his Colt .45 frame with a .41 caliber chamber. I don't know enough about guns to know if that's possible or not, but it sounded good enough to be a foolproof way to kill a few adversaries and get away with it by pinning it on the only guy in town who owned a .41 caliber. Of course Brandon/Durango has this all under control and figured out in plenty enough time to make the save.
You know what I was really waiting for though; I was real curious about how much Smiley was charging for his bathtubs. In the 1973 Western flick "Kid Blue", Warren Oates buys one of them new fangled steel bathtubs for $12.99 (without freight charges). Smiley's were porcelain lined so that might have gone for a couple more bucks, but sad to say, we just don't ever get to find out.
Well stuff like this happens a lot in these old time Western flicks and I've learned pretty much to just go with it, but that was one of the more unusual ones. Backing up a bit, this is one of those stories involving water rights and who controls what and how is the hero going to resolve things favorably for all those concerned. Actually, even though this is a Durango Kid picture, it's his alter-ego Steve Brandon that does most of the investigative work and makes the final save to close out the story. Charles Starrett handles a very athletic stunt near the end of the picture where he leaps head first through a cabin window, does a somersault and gets the drop on bad guy Burch (Chuck Roberson). Very cool.
As is often the case in a Durango Kid movie, Smiley Burnette shows up to help out, this time in the guise of a traveling bathtub salesman. For those who aren't familiar with Smiley, he usually rode a horse named Ring Eye, because the horse had a ring around his eye. Not a natural one of course, it was a painted circle around the horse's right eye. Well the gimmick is extended here as Smiley rides into town with two horses pulling his bathtub wagon, and both have ring eyes. He calls them Ma and Pa, but later on when he needs them to giddy-up, he calls them Bill and Mort, so I don't know how that would work.
There's another gimmick more central to the story in which the general storekeeper Norton (Raymond Bond), who's calling the shots for the bad guys, tricks out his Colt .45 frame with a .41 caliber chamber. I don't know enough about guns to know if that's possible or not, but it sounded good enough to be a foolproof way to kill a few adversaries and get away with it by pinning it on the only guy in town who owned a .41 caliber. Of course Brandon/Durango has this all under control and figured out in plenty enough time to make the save.
You know what I was really waiting for though; I was real curious about how much Smiley was charging for his bathtubs. In the 1973 Western flick "Kid Blue", Warren Oates buys one of them new fangled steel bathtubs for $12.99 (without freight charges). Smiley's were porcelain lined so that might have gone for a couple more bucks, but sad to say, we just don't ever get to find out.
