weezeralfalfa One of 51 westerns by Republic, in the late '30s and early '40s, under the banner of The 3 Mesquiteers: a combination of mesquite and musketeers. The identity of the 3 actors varied. John Wayne was in only 8 of them, including this one. With a run time of only 55 min., it packed in a lot of scheming and action. It's an early example of the direction of George Sherman of B westerns. He would eventually, switch to Columbia, and then Universal, always almost exclusively directing B westerns. Here, Wayne as Stony, Ray Corrigan as Tucson, and Max Trehune as Lullaby are the 3Ms. The latter occasionally got out his dummy, Elmer, to practice some ventriloquism...... The screenplay differs from the usual rustlers, gold thieves or range war. Here, they get involved in trying to stop the outward smuggling of a rare mineral, monium, that can easily be converted into a new type of poisonous gas, for warfare. Doreen McKay, as Ann, is much more than just a token female presence. She's a Secret Service undercover agent, trying to determine who the leaders of this illegal export are. When her partner, Frank, is killed by foreign agent Paul, she suggests Stony be her new partner. He has a price on his head for his said role in Frank's and Paul's deaths. If Stony works out well as her partner, she will drop the charges against him. Stony is given a new name, and a slight disguise . He brazenly gets in the stockroom for the monium, posing as the foreign agent, but is eventually recognized by Gordon: head of the storage facility, as a fake. The monium is loaded onto a series of covered wagons for transport to an awaiting ship across the border. Stony is tied up and put in the last one of these wagons, for an unknown fate. From a hill, Tucson, Lullaby and Ann see Stony put in the wagon. Ann goes for help from the border patrol cavalry. Meanwhile, Tucson and Lullaby sneak up on the wagons and disable the drivers, freeing Stony. They redirect their wagon, and another chases them. Somehow, their wagon catches fire, so they get on the horses and unhitch the wagon, which goes over a cliff. Later, they have a perch on a hill above the wagon trail, close to the international border. They fire at the wagons, hoping to stop them from crossing the border. Eventually , the cavalry arrives and finishes the job......Generally, an exciting western, even thought the main plot device: stopping the shipment of monium is purely imaginary.

JohnHowardReid Director: GEORGE SHERMAN. Screenplay: Betty Burbridge, Stanley Roberts. Based on characters created by William Colt MacDonald. Photography: Reggie Lanning. Film editor: Tony Martinelli. Music director: Cy Feuer. Producer: William Berke.Copyright 20 August 1938 by Republic Pictures Corp. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: 28 August 1938. 6 reels. 55 minutes.COMMENT: First of the Wayne "Three Mesquiteers" saves all its action for the final reel. Worth the wait if you're prepared to sit through a plethora of extremely dull scenes, complete with tedious dialogue to match. True, the players do make some enthusiastic attempts to liven things up. Perhaps over-enthusiastic. And it's hard to put down Duke Wayne, even when confronted by a wooden, if pretty heroine and a rather lackluster set of villains. Production values were so strapped in the first half of the picture that director George Sherman was obliged to put himself into the dude ranch hotel scenes in order to flesh out the rather sparse "crowd" of guests. The childish story with its contemporary nervous pre-war time setting (which allows the use of some ancient stock footage for openers) comes over as so laughably inept in plotting and dialogue (and often in performances as well) as to make Pals of the Saddle an unintentional but nonetheless very effective lampoon that modern audiences will doubtless enjoy!.

bkoganbing Pals of the Saddle find the Three Mesquiteers getting involved with a group of war profiteers in the time before World War I. Somebody has the bright idea to smuggle something called Monium out of the USA in violation of the Neutrality Act for use to make poison gas. People in 1938 still remembered the horror of poison gas used in the war and also recently by Mussolini in his invasion and takeover of Ethiopia. That made it a topical film and gave it a dimension we can't appreciate today.The bad guys use a salt mine as a cover and chlorides are what makes up salt. Why the scriptwriters were concocting some fictitious element called Monium to use when they could have just as easily said chlorine which was in the some of the poison gas used in World War I is beyond me.Doreen McKay is an undercover U.S. Secret Service agent who gets Wayne involved in her investigation when her partner is killed. Wayne takes the partner's place and nearly gets himself done in. Good thing Corrigan and Terhune are around. There's an exciting shoot out at the end as the Mesquiteers stop the wagon train of Monium from crossing the border. This was Wayne's first Mesquiteer film and it certainly was a step up from his Monogram films of the middle thirties. He and Doreen McKay have an interesting relationship, sort of like what Roy Rogers and Dale Evans had in some of their Republic Pictures.Pals of the Saddle is not however the best of Wayne's Mesquiteer films. Still it's entertaining and will please fans of the eternal Duke.

Michael O'Keefe Remember Saturday mornings at the movies? This is a perfect example of the memories. Almost an hour of good guys, bad guys, pretty gal in trouble and gun play. Three saddle pals stop foreign spies from smuggling a dangerous chemical into Mexico. The chemical is used to make poison gas. Fast horses and stray bullets travel with the familiar generic background music.John Wayne, Ray 'Crash' Corrigan and Max Terhune are the saddle pals. Doreen McKay is the government agent that needs help catching the bad guys.