Tue 30 Dec 2014
A Western Movie Review: BILLY THE KID TRAPPED (1942).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[6] Comments
BILLY THE KID TRAPPED. PRC, 1942. Buster Crabbe, Al St. John, Bud McTaggart, Anne Jeffreys, Glenn Strange, Walter McGrail, Ted Adams, Jack Ingram, Milton Kibbee. Director: Sam Newfield.
Let me say right off from the start that any movie with Anne Jeffreys in it can’t be all bad, but this one comes very very close. If only they’d given her something to do. As the sister of the recently deceased sheriff of Mesa City (gun poisoning), all she is allowed to do is stand around and direct admiring eyes at young and handsome Billy the Kid (Buster Crabbe), hinting at a possible romantic liaison between the two, even perhaps after the movie’s end, but young and handsome Billy does not even seem to notice.
And the 10 to 12 year old boys who would made up the large part of viewing audience back in 1942 would have yelled something fierce if he had.
Not that there aren’t possibilities in the plot, which begins with Billy and his two pals on the road being rescued from jail by a benefactor unknown. Set to be hanged the next morning for a killing they did not do, the three saddlemates are grateful but puzzled.
Turns out (and this comes out early in the story) that the three, Bill, Fuzzy and Jeff, have been impersonated by three outlaws dressed up as them, and if they were to be hanged, there would be no one to blame the three outlaws’ crimes on.
After this masterful plot is revealed, the rest of the story is a pure yawner. Lots of men on horses riding here and there, holding up stagecoaches, fist fights in saloons, gunmen lurking behind stable doors, the whole works. Me, no longer 10 or 12 years old, I fell asleep.
December 30th, 2014 at 11:12 pm
I don’t recall ever making it all the way through one of the Crabbe Billy the Kid series. I liked Buster, but these weren’t poverty row, they were skid row. On top of which the prints I have seen looked as if they had done a few cycles in the washer with too much bleach.
However I would gladly watch an hour of Anne Jeffries doing nothing in particular. I still recall the first stirrings of lust in my innocent little heart between her Marion Kirby on TV’s TOPPER and Barbara Britton’s Pam North on MR. AND MRS. NORTH.
Jeffries had that great voice too. I couldn’t have been more than 5, but I don’t think I was watching TOPPER to see Neil the St. Bernard or the even droopier faced Leo G. Carroll. I liked Robert Sterling and Richard Denning, but honestly compels me to admit they weren’t the reason I watched those two shows. I can still close my eyes and see Britton’s legs and hear Jeffries voice.
I’ll even confess the first time I watched BADMAN’s TERRITORY it was more for her than Randolph Scott or Robert Ryan. It was, shame to admit, oh, look, Randolph Scott’s in this too.
I never did understand the presence of Bud McTaggart in the Crabbe series. Did they really need two guys with a smile like the grill of a ’57 Chevy to counter toothless Al St. John?
December 30th, 2014 at 11:57 pm
Allow me to recommend Billy The Kid’s Fighting Pals with Carleton Young as Jeff, Fuzzy as Fuzzy, and Bob Steele as Billy. The real one. The Steele pictures had, if not more polish, more ‘soul’. Bob went back to Republic after half a dozen of these, and then made many stops both major and minor.
December 31st, 2014 at 4:40 am
I always kind of liked Buster Crabbe; in his early days at Paramount he showed a certain amount of promise, a relaxed athletic charm that eased him through the lower depths of Hollywood quite nicely in later years.
December 31st, 2014 at 3:01 pm
The Billy the Kid movie I watched is one of 20 in a box set of BK movies I bought several years ago and unearthed while rummaging around in the basement. I note now that three of them have Bob Steele as Billy, but alas Barry, FIGHTING PALS is not one of them.
No matter. I’ll make sure that the next one I watch from this set is a Steele one. Depending on how it goes, I may or may not report back here about it. (I don’t tell you about everything I watch.)
December 31st, 2014 at 4:02 pm
Bob Steele was not as tall, or handsome, as Buster Crabbe. Buster also had a stronger, more resonant voice, but Bob Steele made many more films, big and small, in some pretty good and memorable parts. I believe that goes to warmth, or empathy. This is the most lasting and memorable quality and Steele had that even as Curley or Canino. He is always worth checking out, however briefly, and he is more than a curiosity.
December 31st, 2014 at 4:24 pm
As recognized king of the serials Buster had a larger built in audience and greater name recognition — at least in terms of star power. It’s a bit like John Wayne and Bob Livingston vs Steele in the Three Mesquiteers series.
However good he was he just did not have the name.
I agree about Steele being memorable in many films, but whether that would have translated to leading man status outside of the B western I don’t know.
He was fairly good looking younger, but as he matured the face, great as it was for film, was a character actor face and he had not established himself as leading man enough to overcome that.