Sat 29 May 2021
An Archived Western Movie Review: SUNDOWN IN SANTA FE (1948).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[11] Comments
SUNDOWN IN SANTA FE. Republic Pictures, 1948. Allan ‘Rocky’ Lane, Eddy Waller, Roy Barcroft, Trevor Bardette, Jean Dean. Director: R. G. Springsteen.
B-westerns get no respect. They’re seldom listed in any of the various video guides or other standard reference books. Mysteries of the same vintage and caliber seem to be included, even with the same production values and indifferent plots, but not the movies of Rocky Lane, Lash LaRue, or Sunset Carson. Not even the films of Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys himself. And hey, come on, they’re not that bad.
To remedy that, to some small minor extent, I’m going to be including a few of them from time to time in these pages. Not a lot of them. Only the ones I watch, and if I watch too many of them, my mind will turn to mush, if I can say that without spoiling the point I was making, but what else can I say?
The opening scenes are very promising. Armed robberies that are taking place near and about Santa Fe are linked by the discovery of similar daggers at the site of each, suggesting that somehow or another Walter Durant, leader of the Lincoln conspiracy ring, is involved. Rocky is sent in as an undercover investigator to find out exactly what is going on.
There’s very little mystery to the affair, however, as it turns out, since the son of the sheriff that Rocky goes to work for soon shows his true colors. He’s in love with the daughter of the rancher who is running the gang, although the man (as it turns out) is not really the mastermind behind it all. While the secret identity if that man is no secret either, at least to the audience, it takes Rocky most of the picture to figure it out.
There’s plenty of action, but there’s also too much plot for such a relatively short feature, and details of what’s happening (and why) soon get swamped in the desire to get the story over with in its allotted amount of running time. While Rocky is ruggedly handsome, there’s no love interest for him at all, and maybe that’s why as a kid, I liked his movies so much. No gooey, gloppy stuff for him, at least not in this one.
May 29th, 2021 at 1:11 pm
Walter Durant is the bad guy? A play on names, Walter Duranty was a New York Times journalist covering the Soviet Union and won a Pulitzer Prize for making light of the Ukrainian famine. Some years later the Times gave it back? Or did they. In any case, a truly bad guy.
May 29th, 2021 at 1:20 pm
Walter Durant is the villain in this one as per my original review and the IMDb synopsis, but as a character’s name, he is not included in the credits, which puzzles me.
But you are correct, the similarity to real life bad guy Walter Duranty is too close to be coincidental.
May 29th, 2021 at 4:26 pm
Just watched this via YouTube. Man, that town was evil. One reviewer at the IMDB calls the film â€too grandiose and highfalutin’ for my tasteâ€. Now that is MY kind of B Western!
May 29th, 2021 at 4:28 pm
Oh, “Walter Durant†is not listed as a character because he spends the entire film under an alias.
May 29th, 2021 at 4:49 pm
Thanks, Patrick. That’s an explanation that makes sense.
May 29th, 2021 at 7:01 pm
I wonder if the lack of romantic interest was because Rocky was also playing Red Ryder in this era? In any case a cowboy always had his horse, Black Jack in Lane’s case.
Republic always seemed to put a little more effort into Rocky Lane’s Westerns when it came to plot, maybe because Lane was a bit better actor than many B cowboy stars.
Today it’s hard to listen to a Rocky Lane Western and not expect Alan Young to show up whenever he enters a stable.
Despite too much plot this was a tight little film and worth catching.
May 29th, 2021 at 7:23 pm
Rocky hugs Black Jack in the first five minutes of Sundown in Santa Fe, and it was at that point that I decided I liked the movie already. Later he takes on a guy who is maltreating a horse.
May 29th, 2021 at 8:53 pm
I always enjoyed the Rocky Lane series, despite the fact that most of them are identical.
May 29th, 2021 at 10:51 pm
A horse will never let you down even if it loses a shoe. A woman will let you down *rather than* lose a shoe.
May 30th, 2021 at 6:07 am
Lazy Georgenby, a horse will never say, “Is that what you’re wearing?”
June 1st, 2021 at 10:08 pm
[…] on the heels of Sundown in Santa Fe (reviewed here ), here is a review of another B-western, and if you don’t like them and if this happens to be […]