The New PRC and Lash Larue. It makes you cringe, just to read those words: arguably the worst production company in Gower Gulch and a guy who sounds like a one-shot villain in a Charleton comic book. Has to be a terrible movie, even by B Western standards.
Well, it's obviously cheaply shot, but it's not awful. Al St. John provides some decent comic-sidekicking, The plot: bandits are robbing the food supplies wagons, driving up food prices, and vigilantes are robbing the food supply wagons to donate to poor people; Lash and Al get interested after wandering into town and noticing pretty Jennifer Holt. Ray Taylor directs at a decent clip. An awful lot of it is shot around a particular dusty tree on the Iverson Ranch to speed camera set-ups for DP Ernest Miller, but, hey, anything to save a buck. Lee Morgan is the laziest, biggest crybaby sheriff you ever saw. George Cheseboro is selling food at prices that look okay for 2019. By the end, it all makes sense.
And Lash Larue is a dead ringer for a young Humphrey Bogart. He even sounds like Bogey. Actress Sarah Padden once met him, looked at him for a while, then asked if his mother had ever met Bogart. His real name was Alfred Larue, born in either Michigan or Louisiana. He decided to give acting a whirl in his mid-twenties, but no major would give him a contract. Finally, PRC said if he could handle a bullwhip, they would give him a job. He said he could, almost killed himself trying to learn it on his own, then PRC paid for lessons.
Many years later, he taught Harrison Ford how to handle the whip for the first Indiana Jones movie. He died in 1996, having gone through ten wives and 78 years, and almost certainly hearing a few jokes far too many times.
Well, it's obviously cheaply shot, but it's not awful. Al St. John provides some decent comic-sidekicking, The plot: bandits are robbing the food supplies wagons, driving up food prices, and vigilantes are robbing the food supply wagons to donate to poor people; Lash and Al get interested after wandering into town and noticing pretty Jennifer Holt. Ray Taylor directs at a decent clip. An awful lot of it is shot around a particular dusty tree on the Iverson Ranch to speed camera set-ups for DP Ernest Miller, but, hey, anything to save a buck. Lee Morgan is the laziest, biggest crybaby sheriff you ever saw. George Cheseboro is selling food at prices that look okay for 2019. By the end, it all makes sense.
And Lash Larue is a dead ringer for a young Humphrey Bogart. He even sounds like Bogey. Actress Sarah Padden once met him, looked at him for a while, then asked if his mother had ever met Bogart. His real name was Alfred Larue, born in either Michigan or Louisiana. He decided to give acting a whirl in his mid-twenties, but no major would give him a contract. Finally, PRC said if he could handle a bullwhip, they would give him a job. He said he could, almost killed himself trying to learn it on his own, then PRC paid for lessons.
Many years later, he taught Harrison Ford how to handle the whip for the first Indiana Jones movie. He died in 1996, having gone through ten wives and 78 years, and almost certainly hearing a few jokes far too many times.