Better Late Then Never

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Executive producer: Scott R. Dunlap. Copyright 1 May 1949 by Allied Artists Productions, Inc. New York opening at the Palace: 15 September 1949. U.S. release: 1 May 1949. U.K. release: 1 May 1950. Australian release through British Empire Films: 5 January 1950. Australian length: 7,332 feet. 81 minutes. Cut to 78 minutes (USA); 76 minutes (UK).COMMENT: A commendable Allied Artists attempt to make an "A" western (although the film was actually released as a "B" in England and Australia). It certainly demonstrates what the studio's usual contract talent (both in front of and behind the cameras) could do, given a halfway generous budget. True, the cast assembled here is more impressive than normal, with quickie players like Miljan and Hale giving particularly solid performances. Bit players include a number of well-known Monogram faces including Tim Ryan (as a drunk), Kenne Duncan, I. Stanford Jolley and stuntman Chuck Roberson.Director Lesley Selander has contrived some great action sequences. We especially remember a marvelous fist fight between husky Rod Cameron and two brutal assailants in a barn. But the general pace of the film is quite attractively slow, so as to show off the fine pictorial qualities of Neumann's sepia photography and the aural appeal of Kay's subdued, piano-tinkling score.The script, particularly in its heady dialogue, reveals the skillful hands of Sam Newman and W. Scott Darling.

"Stampede" was an ambitious entry from the newly created bigger budget "Allied Artists" extension of poverty row studio Monogram Pictures.Stanton (Donald Curtis) and Cox (John Eldredge) have lured unsuspecting farmers west with the promise of good land with ample water. Unfortuneatly, cattleman Mike McCall (Rod Cameron) controls all of the area's water and is reluctant to share it. Settlers John Dawson (Steve Clark) and his fiery young daughter Connie (Gale Storm) are the most vocal of those opposing McCall. Banker T.J. Forman (John Miljan) is tasked with trying to sway McCall into sharing his water.As in most of these cattlemen vs. the nesters westerns, the argument is that the cattlemen have forged the land and feel that they are entitled to all of the grazing land surrounding their ranches. That's basically the plot.McCall's brother Tim (Don Castle) takes an interest in Connie while Mike will have nothing to do with her. Sheriff Aaron Ball (Johnny Mack Brown tries to keep the peace between the two sides.Stanton plans to stampede McCall's cattle and blow up the dam blocking the water. As they are making preparations, Tim comes upon them and is shot by Stanton. Then, the gloves are off as Mike vows revenge. But the cattle are stampeded and..........................................The story was written by a young Blake Edwards who would go on to bigger and better things ("The Pink Panther", Julie Andrews et al). The stampede sequence is well done and the miniature work at its climax is quite convincing. However, the character of Mike McCall is supposed to be a big rancher yet, we never see his ranch (likely due to budget considerations).Cameron is good as the hard nosed cattleman although he does an about face in the end. Gale Storm was just emerging as a leading lady. Johnny Mack Brown, who was then starring in his own "B" series at Monogram, makes an effective sheriff. Also in the cast in roles of varying size are western veterans I. Stanford Jolley, Maxwell Reed, Kenne Duncan, Earle Hodgins, Charlie King, Kermit Maynard and Bud Osborne most of whom had appeared in many of Brown's films.Cameron and Brown would re-team the following year in "Short Grass".

Big budget is a relative term and while Stampede wouldn't pass muster as a B film at MGM, Paramount etc. it's a good and grim western from Allied Artists. It's a cut rate version with the same issues about ranchers and homesteaders that MGM's Sea Of Grass or Paramount's Shane have. In a far more humorous vein John Wayne's McLintock explores the same issues.Rod Cameron certainly sits as tall in the saddle as the Duke did. Unlike John Wayne, Cameron never escaped B pictures. He's the local McLintock in Stampede who built himself a nice cattle empire with his more easy going brother Don Castle. He's also built himself a dam and settlers who've bought parcels of land now have no water.There seems to be a lot of personal animus directed at Cameron by villains John Eldredge and John Miljan for no discernible reason other than jealousy. They seem to want to bring him down just on general principles. Among the settlers that Miljan and Eldredge bring are Steve Clark and his daughter Gale Storm.Cameron may never have cracked the A picture market as a star. But Stampede is a fine B western and the climax is the title.

...Gale Storm's size 5 pointy-toe boots on the shin, Ouch! All this in Allied Artist's rock'em-sock'em 1949 western Stampede. Allied Artists, not to be confused with United Artists, was an outgrowth of cheap movie font Monogram, a new label for the modest production company's more expensive pictures. While the budget for Stampede was no doubt comfortably below that of the $1,200,000 layout for the company's critical and financial hit of 1947, It Happened On Fifth Avenue, this highly entertaining western nevertheless qualified as a medium or "B-plus" production. But director Lesley Selander and producer Blake Edwards, who also co-scripted, were a pair who knew how to make every available dollar count. Selander was a veteran of dozens,(eventually over a hundred) B-grade westerns and other programmers starring the likes of Tim Holt, William Boyd, and Gene Autry, while Edwards would later gain fame and considerable fortune with the popular Peter Gunn television show and the fabulously successful Pink Panther series of feature pictures. No wonder Stampede comes off a tightly-knit, impressively filmed, dramatically engaging, outdoor picture of the type highly satisfying to the western aficionado.The plot, cattlemen versus homesteaders, could be labeled western scenario #6, but who cares -- there hasn't been a new story since 33 A.D. It's the treatment that counts, and it is very well done here with a number of intriguing twists and some unexpected turns. Tall, raw-boned Cameron plays a cattle baron, so hard-nosed in resisting the homesteaders who have legally bought land he had regarded as his range, that he comes off almost an antihero in the opening reels. Diminutive Gale Storm plays the feisty homesteader tomboy who provides his formidable opposition, and of course his eventual love interest. Good support comes from Johny Mack Brown as a sure-shot sheriff friendly to the cattleman, Don Castle as Cameron's happy-go-lucky brother, Jonathan Hale as the cattleman's fair-minded attorney, with John Miljan, Donald Curtis, and John Eldridge as a trio of shady land dealers stirring up trouble.Much of the considerable entertainment value of this modest western come from the intelligent script by Edwards and John C. Champion, with well-developed characters and lots of snappy, colorful dialog, especially the sharp exchanges between Storm and the two cattlemen brothers. Black and white cinematography by Harry Neumann is first rate. The brutal fist fight segueing into a gunfight and back again to a fist fight inside a dark stable qualifies as a minor masterpiece of action filming. The starkly lighted, obliquely angled shots in this an other night scenes demonstrates how what is now known as the film noir style, all the rage in the late 1940's, filtered down even to unpretentious westerns.Stampede is an action packed, dramatically engaging, beautifully filmed, smoothly edited western. Top notch entertainment from Old Hollywood's Golden Era.