Since starting this blog, and the book that’s its namesake, I’ve come to really love the work of George Sherman. He’s a sadly overlooked Western director, with a handful of films that rank with some of the genre’s very best. Reprisal! (1956) is a particularly good one.
Olive Films has done us a favor (again) by prepping four of Sherman’s The Three Mesquiteer films, all starring John Wayne, for an October DVD and Blu-ray release. These are the first series Westerns to hit hi-def — it’s appropriate that they’d be Republics — and I’m excited to see ‘em coming. The titles are: Overland Stage Raiders (1938), Red River Range (1938), The Night Riders (1939) and Three Texas Steers (1939).
Wayne’s co-stars are Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune, the other two Mesquiteers. In Overland Stage Raiders, they’re joined by Louise Brooks. As a kid, I thought The Night Riders was really, really cool. Looking forward to revisiting it.
It will be great to see official DVD releases of 3 Mesquiteers films.
Going back to the video tape days, Republic put out a number of good quality Mesquiteer tapes, and their films have been quite easy to obtain in varying quality by collectors for a while now; so I hope Olive Films don’t plan to put only one film on a DVD for around $20 each, because I can’t see them being big sellers, surely it would have to be at least 2 films on each DVD.