efisch A strange film that is alternately stiff and fluid. Johnny MacBrown is no kid--more like 30. His acting is fairly amateurish but some lines have been well-rehearsed. Outdoor scenes are impressive but the indoor scenes are pure early-talkie confinement. Beery and the subsidiary actors seem to have the talkie thing down pat. Some of the action scenes were probably more impressive in 70mm and the outdoor recording is very good considering the sound limitations. Nasty revenge storyline where Billy justifies his many killings, but he's sure a nice guy about it. There are many killings and lots of mayhem. Some of the comedy lines between Mr. Butterworth and Mr. Hatfield are incredibly corny considering the circumstances. "The Big Trail" is a much better film from the same year and is still available in its impressive 70mm version. You have to really like westerns to appreciate "Billy The Kid", but there are lots of devoted followers.

Robert J. Maxwell If you listen to the opening scenes from this early talkie from another room, as I did, you'll quail. The acting is broad and the dialog like spoken title cards. ("Say, he can't outgun me.") But visually, crude as it is, it's not at all painful.For one thing, limited use is made of the typical "Western" ranches and towns that we see constantly on television and in films like "High Noon." There's a town here alright, but it's just a couple of ramshackle buildings, evidently built for the purpose in Northridge, California, where you can still find dilapidated buildings. Some of the important scenes are shot on locations, including two national parks.For another, it sticks fairly closely to historical reality, at least until the ending, when the virtuous Billy the Kid (Johnny Mack Brown) gallops off into the sunset with his girl friend. I have only an elementary grasp of the Johnson County wars, but my understanding is concurrent with the plot. At least I recognized some of the important names -- McSween and Tunston, for instance.The acting is all over the place, dominated by the need to shout lines so they'll be picked up by the hidden microphones. Wallace Beery,as Pat Garett, is his usual hammy self; this time he's a sheriff determined to keep the law but he has a soft heart when it's called for. The bad guys are really BAD. Johnny Mack Brown in the principal role looks okay, I guess, although perhaps a bit older than he might be, but he can't utter a believable line. Russell Simpson does pretty well by the Scotsman McSween.But the values promoted by the film are problematic. Billy the Kid takes it upon himself to murder those who murdered his friends and employers. The most evil of the evildoers is killed in cold blood. This is a reflection of the chivalric code of the aristocratic plantation owners of the South, the Cavaliers who believed that a man settled his own problems. That's what the sociologist Max Weber called "traditional authority," not the "rational/legal authority" that civilization now lives under. Mix that element of Southern values with the greed and ruthlessness of the Northern Robber Barons and you get land wars with vengeful shoot outs.It's a curious blend, still in evidence today.

barnesgene By the time King Vidor directed this "Billy the Kid," he already had 36 movies under his belt (most of them silent), so it's weird that the movie seems so arbitrarily thrown together. Brutality and tenderness each try to crowd the other out. Somebody dies, and minutes later everyone's smiling again. I think the Western/Cowboy genre was still developing in Hollywood at the time (even after all those silent Westerns), and the addition of sound just threw another monkey wrench into the works. Nevertheless, you can tick off all the Western conventions and clichés as the film unfolds; they're all there. But it's like they're on steroids or something -- you never know when they're going to take on a life of their own. They just don't add up. I'm tempted to give this movie an "8" rating just for its consummate strangeness, but I think a "6" is probably a fairer assessment.

rduchmann King Vidor's 1930 adaptation of Walter Noble Burns' SAGA OF BILLY THE KID plays fairly fast and loose with the facts. Johnny Mack Brown, even in 1930, was a bit old for the lead, and Wallace Beery considerably too old for Pat Garrett. The romance between Kay Johnson's character and Billy is unknown to history, and the ending is a jaw-dropper as well.Against this, though, the film looks *terrific*, almost as if previously unknown contemporary documentary footage of the Lincoln County War had suddenly been found in some New Mexican attic. The sets are realistic, and realistically grubby, and the supporting cast are absolutely the scruffiest, most realistic-looking set of pre-Peckinpah westerners you'll ever see anywhere. (I think there may be more bald heads than average for the old west, but who knows? Those guys always kept their hats on.)Turner Classic Movies dusts this one off every few years (it's scheduled for 6/15/2000), and despite every justified quibble about the casting and the script, it is worth watching just to correct the visual impression you may have received from all the slicker and glossier versions of this story made since 1930.