Wild Bill Wednesday #7: Coming Soon.

« DVR Alert: The Durango Kid On GetTV In October.

DVD Review: Gunsmoke In Tucson (1958). »

Wild Bill Wednesday #7: Coming Soon.

September 24, 2014 by Toby

This is a bit of a cheat. Came across this while researching something else and had to use it.

A post on The Last Bandit (1949) IS in the works, however.

Posted in Adrian Booth, Andy Devine, Forrest Tucker, Joe Kane, Lydecker Brothers, Pre-1950, Republic Pictures, William Elliott | 10 Comments

10 Responses

on September 24, 2014 at 12:55 pm | Reply Jerry Entract

Can’t wait, Toby. Could be the start of a marathon “Toby Post”……….
on September 25, 2014 at 6:57 am | Reply john k

Hi Toby,
I presume that your copy of THE LAST BANDIT is the one I originally
sent to Laura. It’s a pretty good as off-air copies go especially of an old
Trucolor film.
Laura tells me that she has never seen a Lex Barker Western,I hope to
send her THE YELLOW MOUNTAIN with THE MAN FROM BITTER
RIDGE two of Lex’s best.If there are any other Universal goodies you
are after;STAR IN THE DUST for instance just let Laura or myself
know. My view is the more gets written about these little epics then the
more interest they generate which hopefully might see more and more
of them making it to DVD.
As you know I love Universal Fifties Sci-Fi flicks almost as much as I
love their Fifties Westerns.
For anyone interested the screen captures from the German Blu Ray
of THE LAND UNKNOWN are up on DVD Beaver. It is quiet telling when
The Beaver compares the DVD to the Blu-Ray.
I just know eventually Universal are going to release all of their Fifties
Sci-Fi Monster Movies in a deluxe Blu-Ray box set. I’m not a box set kind
of a guy;plus at my stage in life I’m not prepared to wait.
BTW Toby I have decent (mostly) copies of all of the Republic Elliott
A Westerns plus many of the Cameron’s and Tuckers.
I always thought Forrest Tucker Thursday was a cool idea but there
is another blog (Hal Horn?) where the great man is the Patron Saint
so maybe that’s not such a great idea. At any rate I just love that Tuck!
Need I add that THE LAST BANDIT has yet another sensational Tucker
performance.
- on September 27, 2014 at 10:22 pm | Reply Laura
  
  Yep, it’s the one you sent me, John! Looking forward to hearing Toby’s thoughts — I’ve not yet had time to see it but looking forward to it!
  
  You’ve certainly got me intrigued by your descriptions of the Lex Barker Westerns, they sound like fun. You know I share your feelings on the importance of keeping lesser-known films in the public eye!
  
  I’m intrigued by all the love for Forrest Tucker. Have seen him in a couple movies and he’s never especially impressed me one way or another, but I suspect I just haven’t seen enough of his work, given the regard in which many of you hold him.
  
  Best wishes,
  Laura
on September 25, 2014 at 9:24 am | Reply Toby

First, The Land Unknown Blu-ray looks nice, judging from the stuff on DVD Beaver. That movie’s got everything: Jock Mahoney, B&W Scope, fake dinosaurs. I just love it, and when it came out on laserdisc letterboxed I musta watched it a dozen times in a month. I’m dying for a Blu-ray Creature set. I hate the third one, but love Revenge.

Man From Bitter Ridge is one I haven’t seen in forever. I remember it being terrific.

Forrest Tucker’s presence in 50s Westerns is something I understand more and more as I go deeper and deeper into this book/blog project. And from bad-guys to supporting good-guy stuff to leads, he’s always terrific. It’s usually a very real, effortless type performance, much like you get from the great Ward Bond. Plus, he’s in Hellfire, so he’s in a lofty position indeed.

Working on a piece on Gunsmoke In Tucson. That’s a very underrated little film.
- on September 27, 2014 at 10:23 pm | Reply Laura
  
  Very intrigued by your comparison of Forrest Tucker to Ward Bond, who I adore.
  
  I’ll also be reviewing GUNSMOKE IN TUCSON so am glad to hear the good advance words on it!
  
  Best wishes,
  Laura
on September 25, 2014 at 1:58 pm | Reply RON HILLS

It would be great if more of Wild Bills movies were released to dvd. I am particularly thinking of his bigger budget movies. I don’t know whether Warners or another studio hold the rights to these movies. Perhaps someone could enlighten me.BTW John, I had never heard of Mr Horn until you mentioned it. I looked up some of the details about the film and it seems interesting.
- on September 26, 2014 at 8:16 am | Reply john k
  
  Ron,
  Sadly the Republic library is now owned by Paramount and that
  includes all those wonderful Elliott,Cameron,Tucker larger budget
  A Movies.
  Olive Films are (very) slowly releasing some of the Republic titles
  but Elliott and Cameron seem to be well out of their comfort zone.
  Furthermore,as I have stated many times before Paramount also
  own lots of the Allied Artists pictures that were sold off to Republic
  decades ago.
  MR HORN is great a three hour epic with fine production values,
  and terrific performances from David Carradine and Richard Widmark.
  First half of the film has them dealing with Geronimo and the second
  half shows Tom Horn becoming a hired killer for wealthy cattle barons
  and details his decline into alcohol.
  It’s sort of rumoured that Warners own the rights to this so we may see
  a DVD release at some point.
on September 25, 2014 at 5:39 pm | Reply Johnny Guitar

Recently GRIT TV played Bill Elliott in “The Showdown”, that’s all so far. A while back Get TV played several Wild Bill movies I a row. At the time my local channel that carried GET was playing all programs muted(!) so I missed those. I have been hoping they’d play either them again or more Elliotts. But nothing yet. I hope both GRIT & GET start playing more Elliott movies, esp. his color features. GRIT also recently showed Roy Rogers “Grand Canyon Trail” which I was standing by (at 4 a.m.) to see if it would be the color version. But no, ): just the b/w copy again. Elliott movies are available on the web, last time I gave the name of the website that they’re available on it was blocked. So I won’t try to help out on that again, but all Elliotts are available to buy if you look.
on September 25, 2014 at 7:56 pm | Reply Bob G

The GRITTV GRAND CANYON TRAIL was the edited version but it was cleaner looking than the uncut B&W versions from Sinister and Alpha. They showed DON’T FENCE ME IN, also edited. (GET seems not to cut anything.)

Grit also widescreens everything.

THE LAST BANDIT is a remake of another Republic, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY-1941, starring Bob Steele.
- on September 25, 2014 at 8:02 pm | Reply Toby
  
  I LOVE The Great Train Robbery. Maybe the Lydecker Brothers best work.