Fri 22 Jun 2018
A Western Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: RETURN OF THE BAD MEN (1948).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[8] Comments
RETURN OF THE BAD MEN. RKO, 1948. Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan, Anne Jeffreys, “Gabby†Hayes, Jacqueline White, Steve Brodie, Tom Keene (as Richard Powers), Lex Barker, Tom Tyler, Robert Armstrong. Written by Charles O’Neal, Jack Natteford & Luci Ward. Directed by Ray Enright.
Back in the 1940s Universal opted to draw in the horror movie fans by teaming up their monsters, starting with FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, continuing with HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN/DRACULA and even ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Columbia nodded to fashion with a vampire/werewolf team in RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE, but basically the fiendish team-up thing was the province of Universal — in Horror movies, that is.
In Westerns it was much the same. The success of big-budget hits like JESSE JAMES, BELLE STAR and BILLY THE KID prepared the ground for Outlaw Biopics like BADMEN OF MISSOURI and WHEN THE DALTONS RODE, but it was RKO that brought on the Owlhoot Rallies with BADMAN’S TERRITORY (1946) and RETURN OF THE BAD MEN (’48) to be followed up by BEST OF THE BAD MEN (’51.)
RETURN pits Billy the Kid, The Daltons, Bill Doolin, the Younger brothers and the Sundance Kid against Randolph Scott, which seems a trifle unfair — to them. Mostly it’s a silly thing, with tiresome comic relief from Gabby Hayes and a clunky romantic conflict between Jacqueline White as Scott’s fiancée and Anne Jeffreys as the outlaw gal redeemed by her love for the square-jawed lawman. Sigh.
But hold on thar, there’s more to RETURN OF THE BAD MEN than you might expect. The story offers plenty of ridin’ shootin’ and fightin’, and director Ray Enright delivers it with maximum pace and camera angles well-judged to emphasize each shot and every punch.
Enright also gives the film a surprising mix of moodiness and realism, as when the bad guys advance on a ranch house military-style, darting from cover to cover, or a jerky tracking shot of the Sundance Kid at the end of a long chase, his tired horse staggering beneath him as they stumble into his Ghost Town Hideout.
Said Sundance is played with edgy nastiness by Robert Ryan, who brings a jarring but welcome touch of noir to the whole thing. Cameraman J. Roy Hunt (of SHE and FLYING DOWN TO RIO) frequently lights him from below, a disturbingly unnatural effect for a Western, and Enright composes his shots so that Sundance always looks like an outsider in a band of outcasts.
Ryan himself more than lives up to the concept, snarling and glowering in between strangling Anne Jeffreys and gunning down Charles Stevens in cold blood. Best of all, his acting collides beautifully with Randy’s stoic decency, giving the whole thing a dramatic conflict that surprised me no end.
RETURN OF THE BAD MEN is almost by definition a pre-destined Dumb Movie, but it sparkles with flashes of intelligence I will remember longer than many “important†films.
June 22nd, 2018 at 8:26 am
You can’t go wrong if Robert Ryan is in the movie. Not to mention Randolph Scott.
June 23rd, 2018 at 12:42 pm
Two excellent reasons for tracking a copy of this movie down, that’s for sure.
June 23rd, 2018 at 12:50 pm
PS. When I was a kid, having Gabby Hayes in a movie was a big plus for it. Meaning no disrespect, now not so much.
June 23rd, 2018 at 12:54 pm
The screenwriter, Charles O’Neal, was Ryan’s father.
June 23rd, 2018 at 12:55 pm
Steve, I guess that’s the reason for the silly sidekicks in B-westerns and hero pulps. The kids loved sidekicks and they thought they were funny. Now as adults we wonder about our younger selves. Of course if we live long enough we enter into our second childhood and think they are funny once again!
June 23rd, 2018 at 1:00 pm
Funny or not, sidekicks gave the hero someone to talk to and get some exposition out of the way. As in Sancho Panza. A useful foil that was not a rival or distraction from the star. In Wyoming and Badman’s Territory Gabby was killed off, and then and now, no one cared for the murder of a sympathetic character
June 23rd, 2018 at 8:09 pm
The sum of its parts are greater than the whole , but the result is better than it has any right to be, and I really liked Anne Jeffries
(left over crush from TOPPER).
The bad guys are more evil than usual in this one so there feels like there is more threat than in most Westerns.
June 24th, 2018 at 4:52 pm
I really enjoyed this movie and have it on DvD. Scott did several good ones for RKO around this time. One of my pleasures is spotting all the old grizzled western actors/stuntmen who had been at it for more than three decades. Here we have Hank Bell, who often sported a handlebar mustache and Bud Osborne, who is credited with more appearances as a stagecoach driver than any one else–an that’s what he’s doing here. He came to Hollywood on a cattle drive when Inca bought a herd for use in westerns in the mid-teens. He stayed around making himself useful until he eased into acting. I’ve always followed him as one of his several wives was one of my mother’s aunts.