Fri 7 Nov 2014
A Western Movie Review: MYSTERY RANCH (1932).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[11] Comments
MYSTERY RANCH. Fox Films, 1932. George O’Brien, Cecilia Parker, Charles Middleton, Charles Stevens, Forrester Harvey, Noble Johnson, Roy Stewart, Betty Francisco. Based on the novel The Killer, by Stewart Edward White. Director: David Howard.
The best line in this antique and in many ways very Gothic western comes very near the end, as the villain in the piece comes to realize that the jig is up, standing at the edge of a cliff: “Young man, if you want to serve that on me, you’ll have to do it in Hell!” And off he jumps, tumbling hundreds of feet down to his death, and a well-deserved one at that.
It’s the end of a very satisfying, and for a western made in 1932, quite sophisticated film, a watching experience best enjoyed in the company of other western fans, as was the case for me last weekend in Walker Martin’s living room the evening before Rich Harvey’s pulp and paperback show the nest day.
IMDb describes the plot thusly, and I can’t improve upon it in terms of either brevity or accuracy: “An undercover ranger investigates a deranged rancher who acts as a law unto himself, finding a girl held as a prisoner until she agrees to marry the madman.”
George O’Brien is the hero, stalwart and strong. Cecilia Parker plays the girl held against her will by deceased father’s business partner, Henry Steele, played by a gaunt but still powerful-looking Charles Middleton, who first claims that Jane Emory is his niece, but then reveals his true plans: to marry her, carried away both by lust and to take full control of the former partnership.
On her own, Jane would be no match for the mad, piano-playing Henry Steele, who vows to eliminate any living person near his ranch who will not bow down to him. It is up to Texas Ranger Bob Sanborn (George O’Brien) to save the day.
Besides the ending, which I apologize for revealing, just in case you decide obtain this movie on DVD and watch it for yourself, there was one other scene that I found extremely striking. Toward the end of the movie, Bob and Jane are trying to make their escape, and they find themselves trapped atop an old Apache stronghold in the hills. Bob is firing a rifle down upon their pursuers, while Jane, a mere slip of a girl, is cowering against his back. It’s straight from pulp western cover. If only it had been in color!
November 7th, 2014 at 12:42 pm
I’ve seen this film several times and I’m impressed after each viewing. Not your typical B-Western!
I recently read the story that the movie is based on and it’s a faithful adaptation. It has been reprinted in BLOOD n THUNDER #31/32, a special all western issue, under the title “The Killer” by Stewart Edward White. My notes read as follows:
“Novella first published in the slick, REDBOOK, in 1919-1920 as a serial. Likable hero who gets involved in a gothic western.
Made into the great B-western, MYSTERY RANCH, starring George O’Brien and Charles Middleton. This movie was discussed in issue 12/13 of BLOOD n THUNDER. Last seen in 2004 and I was impressed by the atmosphere and piano playing villain.”
This was also reprinted in a 1948 issue of TRIPLE WESTERN.
November 7th, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Perhaps Ed Hulse will see this and straighten me out on something. White’s story “The Killer” is described in several places as a novella, but it appeared in REDBOOK as a four-part serial, and was published in hardcover in 1920 by Doubleday Page, seemingly as a full-length novel.
Regarding Noble Johnson, whom you’re right about, Walker, he has a very formidable part of this movie. Not only was he (Mudo) able to strangle a deputy sheriff (as I recall) with his bare hands, but Steele had had his tongue cut out so he could not speak, which along with another cowhand being tortured for not obeying orders, emphasized the grotesqueness of parts of this movie not seen in any other westerns that I can recall.
November 7th, 2014 at 1:01 pm
By the way, in addition to Charles Middleton playing a great villain, Noble Johnson also played a very effective part. One of the few African Americans who had a decent career in the movies, he often played Indians. He was a big man and in this film, he uses his hands to strangle his victims. The movie starts off with a great scene of Noble Johnson strangling a cowboy and then hanging him by the neck.
November 7th, 2014 at 1:56 pm
The REDBOOK serial must have been in very short installments because “The Killer” is a novella. In BLOOD n THUNDER it takes up 57 large pages. I checked the book which is available online and THE KILLER is a collection made up of:
The Killer
The Road Agent
The Tide
Climbing for Goats
Moisture, A Trace
The Ranch
November 7th, 2014 at 2:04 pm
That makes sense. Thanks, Walker!
November 7th, 2014 at 3:04 pm
First Stewart Edward White was more than a cut above most pulp level western writers of his time, closer to Zane Gray, Clarence Mulford, Rex Beach, or Ridgwell Cullum in prestige. He’s forgotten to a certain extent today, but not deservedly so (a few of his books were issued in early paperback form and even one or two later). REDBOOK was a slick even then and paid much better than the best of the pulps and catered to writers held a bit above the pulp level. White in his day was a top selling writer and admired storyteller. It’s no surprise this has a stronger story and better developed characters keeping that in mind. Some of the country’s top illustrators worked on the magazine appearances of his work.
It wasn’t unusual for a shorter version of a work to appear in magazine form and later be expanded to novel length. Few books made the transition from magazine to book without major revisions. For instance Edgar Rice Burroughs RED STAR OF TARZAN aka TARZAN AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY exists in four major formats, the original pulp appearance, the radio adaptation, the serial THE NEW ADVENTURES OR TARZAN, and the book TARZAN AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY, and each is distinctively different. Perry Mason novels appearing in the SATURDAY EVENING POST might be expanded 10,000 words or more for book publication. Even serialized works are often much shorter in magazine form.
George O’Brien’s westerns were often a cut above most B cowboy pictures if only because in the silent era he had been a major leading man and not merely a cowboy star. They all seem to have better production values than most and take more care in terms of story and character.
Ironic, since he looks a bit stocky to us today, O’Brien was known earlier for his body and posed semi nude for countless photographers and artists. He was considered to have the perfect masculine physique.
Sinister Cinema has been touting this one for years as the best mix of western and mystery and with some justification. This one has mood, action, a splendid Miltonic villain — it’s hard to do much better than the future Ming the Merciless as a villain — stalwart hero (who could actually act for a change), attractive heroine, and the impressive presence of Noble Johnson, one of the few black actors of the time to have a career as something other than comedy relief.
And this one has atmosphere to spare, gothic in the true sense of the word with an almost palpable sense of evil. I thought this little B handled the gothic atmosphere better than later big productions like Eastwood’s HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER or PALE RIDER that sailed so far over the top as to be more grotesque than atmospheric.
It’s not only a good little film, it’s much better than we have any right to expect it to be.
THE KILLER is available at Project Gutenberg as a free e-book download with illustrations for anyone who can’t find a copy.
November 7th, 2014 at 4:53 pm
I can’t add anything to what’s already been said: Book & Movie are both well worth your time.
November 7th, 2014 at 9:24 pm
Please allow me some bragging rights: I more or less singlehandedly got Sinister Cinema into the B-Western business more than 15 years ago, when the proprietor was looking to expand into other genres and I was liquidating the estate of a major film collector who had accumulated 16mm prints of over 600 rare horse operas from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. Sinister’s owner, Greg Luce, purchased nearly 200 of those prints. Since he planned on calling the new line “Sinister Six-Guns,” he asked me if there were any B Westerns with mystery/horror elements. I explained the concept of Western Gothic to him and recommended MYSTERY RANCH as the leading exponent of that filmmaking style. I also rented him my own 16mm print, one of only four extant, for mastering. A second-generation “dupe,” it doesn’t do justice to the 35mm nitrate original, which shows off to much better advantage the atmospheric cinematography by Joe August and George Schneiderman (both of whom shot pictures for John Ford, including earlier George O’Brien starrers). Unfortunately, my dupe print was contrasty to begin with, and video tends to enhance contrast anyway, so what we see today doesn’t come close to replicating the subtleties of shading in scenes taking place in Steele’s den and in exteriors shot night for night.
Although most film historians (including me) tend to refer to O’Brien’s early ’30s Fox Westerns as “little” or “B” pictures, they really weren’t. Their budgets hovered around $200,000 — at a time when Poverty Row Westerns were being made for as little as $5,000 — and they were mostly shot on location. MYSTERY RANCH was shot in Arizona, not far from Sedona, and the “old Apache stronghold” where the climactic battle unfolds is the real deal. Additionally, the O’Brien Westerns in this period (which mostly included Zane Grey adaptations) often played as single features in first-run theaters, including those in the Fox circuit. They weren’t used as Saturday-matinee fodder. In New York, for example, MYSTERY RANCH premiered at the legendary Winter Garden theater on Broadway. For that engagement it was retitled THE KILLER, because hard-boiled NYC patrons weren’t partial to Westerns.
The original champion of MYSTERY RANCH was film historian William K. Everson, who owned the 16mm print from which I duped my copy. He ran it for his film-history classes at NYU and the New School for Social Research, and for private groups such as the NYC-based Theordore Huff Film Society. Never sold to TV or reissued theatrically, the film was rediscovered in the Fox vaults by producer and veteran fan Alex Gordon (an early collaborator of Ed Wood’s), who led the company’s preservation efforts during the early ’70s. Although Fox itself had no interest in preserving MYSTERY RANCH, Alex saved it by making two 16mm “reversal” prints, one of which he gave to Bill, who was a big O’Brien fan.
I had the great pleasure of expressing my fondness for MYSTERY RANCH to its stars, George O’Brien and Cecilia Parker. I meant to bring a 1980 Polaroid of me with them to Walker’s house for the screening but forgot.
On another note, David Vineyard claims above that NEW ADVENTURES OF TARZAN is connected to RED STAR OF TARZAN and its various permutations. I’ve done extensive research on this serial and can state with certainty that any connection is purely coincidental. The original story for NAoT was suggested to ERB by producer Ashton Dearholt, who intended from the first to film the serial in Guatemala.
Prior to forming Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises with George W. Stout and Ben S. Cohen, Dearholt had supervised the production of a 1934 feature film, ADVENTURE GIRL, part of which took place in Guatemala. This picture, starring real-life explorer Joan Lowell and released theatrically by RKO Radio Pictures, had sequences that took place in and around the city of Chichicastenango and the ruins of Tikal, which are used extensively in the serial. Having filmed in this area once, Dearholt thought it an ideal place to locate a Tarzan adventure.
ERB sketched a brief plot outline that was filled out by scripters Charles Francis Royal and Edwin H. Blum. Burroughs approved their final script after making minor changes, such as naming the chimp N’Kima and ensuring that Tarzan’s characterization conformed to the books rather than M-G-M’s Weissmuller films. But Brix himself, in an exclusive interview for BLOOD ‘N’ THUNDER, admitted that huge chunks of the script were jettisoned on location as impossible to film in the time available. Many sequences, he said, were improvised on location. This explains why the finished serial bears little resemblance to chapter synopses printed in the pressbook given for exhibitors: the synopses were written back in Hollywood using the approved script as a guide.
My article on NAoT originally appeared in BnT #5 and was reprinted in THE BEST OF BLOOD ‘N’ THUNDER. It’s going to be reprinted again in an upcoming issue of THE BURROUGHS BULLETIN.
November 7th, 2014 at 9:46 pm
Bragging rights, Ed? You’ve earned them!
Thanks for the long informative comment, perhaps three times longer than my review. It was good to see you at Rich Harvey’s show, and the evening before, when the chosen few watched this movie together. I had a great time.
November 7th, 2014 at 11:24 pm
Not only did 8 book and pulp collectors watch this film at my house but you have to remember that it was Halloween and MYSTERY RANCH is perhaps the greatest gothic western.
In fact Digges, otherwise known as The Major or The Reading Machine, got so scared and uncomfortable that he left before the screening. Of course one reason that he left early might not have been because of the movie. My wife decided to get dressed up in her cowgirl costume, hat, boots, and gun, and proceeded to shoot us all afternoon.
Fortunately the gun did not fire bullets or we all would be reading the newspaper headlines:
Massacre at MYSTERY RANCH screening! Non-collecting wife murders 8 pulp collectors!
November 7th, 2014 at 11:29 pm
Ed
Thanks for pointing out the film to Sinister Cinema, else I would never have seen it, and thank you for the clarification on RED STAR OF TARZAN and the Brix serial. I’ll grant the similarities are superficial in that case though the other three versions are close but with major changes including the ending.
My only point was that the magazine versions of many books were considerably different than the book. THE KILLER in book form runs some 130 odd pages of that collection, which is well over novella if just under novel length (50,000 words generally considered minimum novel length). It’s hard to tell electronically but I would estimate it is in the 45,000 word range in book form.
Just generally a novella runs from 10,000 to 35,000 words and novelet or short novel from 35 to 50 K. Those aren’t set in stone, just general guidelines publishers used to go by. I don’t think there has ever been a hard and fast definition other than that novel tends to indicate 50,000 up.
Despite the fact no one pays by the word much today publishers still use word length when setting standards for writers, a left over from journalism and academia most likely.