Cineanalyst I've seen some, but not many and am not a fan of old B-westerns, but this one, "Scarlet River," is clever. Besides being a B-western, it's a film about film, a type of movie I tend to enjoy.After their filming is repeatedly interrupted by civilization, a film crew rents a ranch for filming their western. Real-life B-western star Tom Keene plays B-western star Tom Baxter, the film-within-the-film's star who is as much of a cowboy on screen as off. In the fictional reality, he kisses the ranch owner and protects her interests against the baddies trying to steal her property and helps her raise her younger brother (including by spanking him for smoking) in between his acting. The ranch owner watches him filming scenes, including him kissing his on-screen romantic interest, and wants to be with him, while her younger brother watches his stunt work and wants to be like him. To save the day, the actor playing an actor acts once more over by donning makeup to pretend to be one of the baddies.Really, Yakima Canutt, who also has a bit part in the film, did the stunts for "Scarlet River," but, for the film-within-the-film, Tom Baxter does his own stunts, except for one. For that one, one of the baddies (played by Lon Chaney Jr., before he turned to monster movies) tries to do a stunt for the absent Baxter, but fails. Really, Canutt did that one, too--a famous stunt he repeated in "Stagecoach" (1939).Another interesting character is Ulysses, who has the part of the stuttering comic relief, a common, if bigoted, trope of these types of films. Ulysses is a ranch hand and wannabe screenwriter who writes a script that mirrors the "real" drama of the baddies trying to steal the woman's ranch. Rather than employ him for his writing, the filmmakers use him as comic relief, too. The director also tells Ulysses that if he figures out a trick, he'll hire him. The surrogate author of "Scarlet River" within the film, Ulysses, in the end, solves the trick.

dougdoepke A film crew gets mixed up with a ranch's dishonest foreman and his conniving mastermind.This oater has one of the darndest scenes of any horse opera I've seen. A movie crew is out in the middle of nowhere shooting a cowboy scene. Except it's not out in the middle of nowhere when a sudden parade of cross-country runners run through the setup. They come out of nowhere, and abruptly the illusion is shattered. More tellingly, it shows how much of an illusion those old matinees were for front row kids like myself.Minimize the boilerplate plot. Instead, it's really fun watching the film crew go through the movie-making motions. As others point out, it's a movie within a movie. And catch Miss Westinghouse herself, Betty Furness, as the actress. I almost thought I was watching one of those old 50's game shows. Also, there's Lon Chaney Jr. while he was still young and strapping. Anyway, it's a fun movie, at least in my little book. And if I'm not mistaken, those rock slabs are Vasquez Rocks just a few miles north of LA. So the crew didn't have to go far, after all.A "7" on the matinée scale.

Robert J. Maxwell An inexpensive Western starring Tom Keene in a ten-gallon corker and directed by nobody you ever heard of, but it's enjoyable in its own quiet way, a playful descent into the vulgate.The story has Edgar Buchanan trying to direct an old-fashioned Western in the Hollywood area and being unable to find a suitably remote location. He accepts an invitation to shoot the movie on a real cattle ranch. El Patrón is more than happy to have the cast and crew because the ranch is in trouble.Okay so far. Now you must hold on because the time line gets a little tortured. This is a modern ranch we're talking about. Yet there are cattle rustlers, the ranchers wear real cowboy outfits, including real old-fashioned pistol belts with real pistols and real bullets, and the villains wear black hats while the actor/hero, Tom Keene, wears a large white hat. And although Keene is a popular movie star, he too carries a real chrome-plated Peacemaker. Things get all mixed up. A galloping horse pursues another galloping horse, or a 1933 bus pursues a galloping horse, or -- well, it doesn't matter. There's a lot of action.These old Westerns look rudimentary but sometimes they have to be admired, if only for having overcome the difficulties of shooting an action picture on location. The equipment was bulky and stolid. An earlier reviewer claimed that the cameras were encased in containers as big as dog house. This is nonsense. They were bigger than that. They were bigger than blimps. They were bigger than the Hindenburg.Yakima Canutt is the stunt man who "does all of Tom's tricks himself." It's fascinating to have your attention deliberately drawn to the effort and skill of what was called a simple "pickup." That is, a girl is injured on a path, a cowboy gallops up and swings her to the saddle behind him. We've seen it dozens of times without really thinking about what would happen to our own spines if we were to try such a simple trick. Stunt men are a clubby lot, and Canutt has always been considered one of the most accomplished. He worked in Hollywood Westerns for years. With Canutt in the saddle, man and horse seemed to be the same animal, just as the Aztecs are said to have believed of Cortez's horsemen.Other notables in the cast include Betty Furness who went on to a successful career as a spokesman for Westinghouse and a consumer advocate in Washington. Also present is Lon Chaney, Jr., who went on to a career as the Wolf Man and ultimately an alcoholic.

kidboots Dorothy Wilson was a charmingly natural actress who started her career as a "secretary to the stars". Her boss, director Gregory La Cava organised a screen test and she was on her way. Even the Westerns she appeared in were among the more memorable and quirky.Around the mid thirties, an entertaining Western spin off series came about - the making of Western movies ("The Cowboy Star", "Hollywood Cowboy") often combining real cowboys with "reel" cowboys. Tom Keene was RKO's Western star (they were the only major studio with a regular "B" Western schedule) so he fitted in right at home in "Scarlet River" as a Hollywood cowboy who was more than a match for the real McCoy!!! The film is a real delight as an intrepid group of movie makers try to film a western but civilization keeps getting in the way - the wagon train breaks down, the settlers are done for - suddenly an estate agent's bus pulls up, they try to film in front of a lonely mountain hut but it is being converted into a Southern Fried Chicken Restaurant and in the middle of a love scene they are invaded by a cross country marathon ("say "52" looks kinda cute"). Where can the company go to get away from modern life. They find the perfect place - "Scarlet River Ranch" - but the ranch is falling on hard times. The bank is foreclosing on the mortgage - ranch hand Ulysses (Roscoe Ates) is too busy sending in movie scripts to attend to ranch business. His latest plot is about a crooked foreman who is robbing the girl he is working for!!! He doesn't realise how close to home he is - but the foreman does!! Jeff (Creighton Chaney, before he became Lon Chaney Jnr.) is in cahoots with an agent and is trying to force Judy, the owner, off the ranch. Dorothy Wilson is such a peach as Judy, it was very unfortunate that she didn't have a bigger career. The motion picture company is a welcome relief - Judy will now have the money for the next payment. After the first day, Tom is taken for a tour of the ranch and starts putting two and two together as far as Jeff, the foreman is concerned - there have been too many odd accidents - hay ricks catching fire in the middle of the night, drinking water being mysteriously poisoned so the cattle have to be shot. In addition he is disgusted at Jeff's influence over Judy's little brother, Buck (Billy Butts), who has been taught to smoke and lie!!! Buck soon comes to his senses and, together with Tom, sets out to rescue Judy, who has been kidnapped. There is more action in this film than in a whole swag of Westerns as Tom Keene (with a lot of help from Yakima Canutt) does some fancy riding and stunts and shows "reel" cowboys are every bit as tough as the real thing. In addition to all this fun, you get a sneak peak at "stars at play" - okay, they are only in RKO's cafeteria but still you can see Myrna Loy (she flew in to RKO for a couple of pictures) sitting with Frances Dee (just a glimpse). Julie Haydon (a Ann Harding / Virginia Bruce lookalike), Bruce Cabot and Rochelle Hudson engage in small talk and Joel McCrea gets to tell a joke at the newstand.Highly Recommended.