Border Badmen

1945 "KING OF THE WILD WEST"
Border Badmen
5.9| 0h55m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 10 October 1945 Released
Producted By: Sigmund Neufeld Productions
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

As a 32nd cousin of the recently deceased Silas Stockton, Fuzzy heads for the reading of the will. The bad guys are after the Stockton estate and plan to kidnap Helen Stockton, the primary heir, and replace her with a stooge. When the henchmen catch her she is with Billy and Fuzzy so they kidnap them also. But the three escape and Billy then heads out to find the culprits.

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Sigmund Neufeld Productions

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Reviews

classicsoncall It's funny how in a lot of the Buster Crabbe/Fuzzy St. John team-ups, Fuzzy often winds up with more screen time or impact on the story than the nominal hero. In this one, he's one of many heirs who come calling on the estate of Silas Stockton after the man passes away, with partner Billy Carson (Crabbe) on hand to lend some brains and brawn when it's needed to take down the bad guys.That opening scene with the toll-gate seemed a little bizarre to me - a two hundred dollar fee being charged for four legged animals to pass and five hundred for the two legged kind. With the toll taker seemingly asleep (actually dead!), I had to wonder why Billy and Fuzzy didn't just ride on through. It would have saved a lot of hassle with the outlaw henchmen.Well it's never that easy for the good guys before they save the day. Charles King, a ubiquitous presence in these early oaters, is the principal hoodlum in the story. He's calling the shots on eliminating the potential Stockton heirs from ever reaching town so he could split the fortune with selected local accomplices. Even some of them, like mayor Jed Bates (Steve Clark) don't last too long when they start questioning Merritt's (King) game plan.I'm sure matinée fans back in the day got their quarter's worth watching Fuzzy liven things up in the story, head butting bad guys and doing the revolving door gimmick with Carson and later on, one of the henchmen. With Fuzzy, you had to believe him whenever he came up with a line like the one in this story - "Stand aside, there's going to be some action around here".
JohnHowardReid As the music of "Home on the Range" breaks out under the opening credits, we know we are in for another nostalgic delight. The plot may be a familiar variation on a very old theme – the use of some of Lou Costello's routines from Hold That Ghost (1941) is an unexpected novelty – and the dialogue may be atrociously clichéd, but the support cast is headed by such welcome old friends as Charles King and Al Ferguson. Even the direction by good old Sam ("Don't call me, Sam, call me, Fast") Newfield is a notch above his usual score of three or four out of ten. The two femme leads are rather innocuous (I saw the film only an hour ago, and already I've forgotten what they look like, whereas people like Henry Hall, I remember well, despite his extremely brief innings on center stage) and the occasional action sequences are well and truly outnumbered by the inordinate amount of footage allocated to Mr. St. John (who appeared in 337 movies, would believe? He also had a career as a writer and a director in silent days). Maybe one of his fans can tell me how he pronounced his name. I assume it was the American way, but I'm not sure. In the U.K. the name is pronounced "Sinjin".
King_man Border Badmen had the potential to be an pretty decent "B" western. Multiple heirs, secret chambers, and impersonations make the plot a step above the usual. Unfortunately, Fuzzy St. John single handedly brings this down to the level of the ridiculous. I don't have overly high expectations for a "B" western but his antics just made this movie painful to watch. I compare any movie against all others I've seen, not just against their budget equals. That puts this movie up against movies like N by NW, Schindler's List, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc. With a Gabby Hayes and without St. John's "humor", this might have made it to a 3. As it is, this was pretty excruciating and among the biggest dogs I've watched. 1/10.
sore_throat This isn't bad for a 40's B-western. One thing I liked was that the villains weren't as cliched as most are in this genre, and the plot (inheritance fraud) was a nice change of pace from the usual revenge/robberies formulas. The comic relief was actually pretty good too, unlike most of its contemporaries (i.e., annoying).For me though, two things let the film down. First, occasionally the script has some really dumb lines (e.g., "I wonder what they want with the identification papers"). Second, the villains give up way too easily after all the trouble they've gone through. Were it not for these shortcomings of the script, this would have been a good film; as it stands, it is only above average.6/10