Cattle Empire (1958)

The Town Of Hamilton Bids You Welcome. Joel McCrea stars as a trail boss falsely imprisoned for his men's misdemeanours. Released and suffering at the hands of an unforgiving and irate town, he's hired by a blind Don Haggerty to drive his herd - but Haggerty has his own agenda's on this trip. A routine Western that is chiefly saved from the bottom rung by the presence of Joel McCrea. McCrea was a real life cowboy type who owned and worked out of a ranch in California, thus he gives this standard Oater a naturalistic core from which to tell the story. If only they could have given him some decent actors to work with, and, or, a bolder script, then this might have turned out better than it did. Directed by Charles Marquis Warren (more famed for TV work like Gunsmoke and his writing than movie directing), the piece is scripted by Daniel B. Ullman, a prolific "B" western script specialist of the 1950s. This, however, is far from being a good effort from his pen. Shot in CinemaScope with colour by DeLuxe, it thankfully at least proves to be most pleasing on the eye. Brydon Baker proving to be yet another cinematographer seemingly inspired by the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, locations. Away from the turgid story there's a classical big Western shoot-out to enjoy, while a Mano-Mano shoot out set among the Alabama rocks towards the end is nicely handled. But the good technical aspects are bogged down by the roll call of by the numbers gruff cowboy characters, and worse still is a two-fold romantic strand that is so weak it beggars belief. All of which is acted in keeping with such an unimaginatively put together series of sub-plots masquerading as a revenge thriller. For McCrea this film is worth a watch - as it is for its beauty (the print is excellent), but in spite of the old fashioned appeal, and a couple of action high points, it remains borderline dull. McCrea and the audience deserve far better. 5/10

Joel McCrea holds this cattle-driving western together competently enough as "Cord", a man who must get his huge herd of cows to market. Problem is, one herd belongs to the citizens of a town that he let his previous crew trash - earning him a five year spell in jail. The other herd is owned by a competitor - so no easy task here for the man. Unusually for the genre, and thankfully here, we have a rather more feisty and independently minded leading lady in the form of "Sandy" (Gloria Talbott) who has just a little of the Barbara Stanwyck about her as the trail progresses. Regrettably, though, the bulk of this film is all a little dull as we watch cows meander around peppered with some rather inane dialogue and some contrived contretemps between his increasingly frustrated team of wranglers and their boss determined not to let history repeat itself. The last ten minutes liven it up a bit, and if you're after a bit of brain fodder for eighty minutes then you could do worse - but the star is well past his best and the drama predictably forgettable.