THE BLACK WHIP. 20th Century Fox, 1956. Hugh Marlowe, Coleen Gray, Adele Mara, Angie Dickinson, Paul Richards, Richard Gilden, Sheb Wooley, Strother Martin. Director: Charles Marquis Warren.

   One reviewer on IMDb says, as someone there so often does, that this is a movie that is so bad, it’s enjoyable. Well, no. It’s mediocre — not bad — and it’s dull, ill-conceived, indifferently directed, and if those are your criteria for enjoying a movie, then maybe it is.

   There is the potential. Oops, make that the past tense. It’s too late now. A veiled lady in black helps one of the “black legs,” a gang of ex-confederate raiders, escape from jail. Her face is covered, but she must be one of four local dance hall girls, all of whom are summarily shipped out of town on a wagon to a town where no one else wants them, either.

   Staying temporarily at a remote transfer station for the local stagecoach line, they and the two brothers who run it are taken prisoner by the black leg gang, led by a suitably villainous Paul Richards, the man with a whip, not a gun.

   But the bad guys do not have a plan, only a goal, and that is to kidnap the governor coming in by stage, force him to grant them pardons, and make their getaway. Nothing else they do makes more sense than pouring water in your boot, as my granddaddy used to say, especially when it comes down to the final confrontation.

   The two brothers have their issues, the four dance house ladies are pretty, but other than Coleen Gray, who has fallen in love with one of the brothers (Hugh Marlowe), apparently at first sight, they have little to do. The younger brother (Richard Gilden) is as green as all get out, and not very interesting. Perhaps there was some potential here, but what what appears on the screen is strictly sub-standard stuff. See paragraph one.