Fresh and Exciting

The acting in this movie is really good.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Complex Holt western with lots of hard riding and fast shooting, but no flying fists. Locations are mainly from familiar LA area scrublands. The plot's a layered one, involving several gangs and different degrees of bad-good guys. Holt starts out as bank robber stealing what he and brother Ankrum believe is their money defrauded from them by a bank. This leads to a series of encounters whose shifting details I leave to other reviewers.Though Lasses White supplies humorous episodes, there's not the lighter tone of the later Chito- Holt entries. It's a fine cast of baddies, including toughie Roy Barcroft in a suit no less, and commanding Morris Ankrum who later saves the universe in 50's sci-fi. But pity poor Janet Waldo of radio fame. When not standing around nicely dressed, she gets all of one close-up, at movie's end. Oh well, there was always Corliss Archer on the radio dial.All in all, having hero Holt undergo some value changes is unusual for an oater, and is the hour's main point of interest. (And see if you agree, Holt looks like a young Roy Rogers here.) Anyway, it's a well-cast and acted western if a somewhat complicated plot.

It's not unusual for these B Westerns to offer up a song that mirrored the title of the picture, however the campfire tune sung here had to do with 'The Outlaw Trail'. So naturally I'm wondering why they didn't change either the name of the picture or the song lyrics to match each other. With all the oaters that came out of the era I knew there had to be one with that title so I checked the IMDb database and there was a 1944 flick with Hoot Gibson and Bob Steele going by "Outlaw Trail". I guess I'll be on the lookout for that one now.I don't think I've seen a Tim Holt Western where he wasn't seconded by Richard Martin as Chico Rafferty. Martin hooked up with Holt a few years later in another string of pictures, in this one his nominal partner is a grizzled character named Whopper portrayed by Lee 'Lasses' White. The comedic aspect of his character doesn't come into play until later in the picture, by which time he handcuffs himself to a storefront dummy along with some other animated hi-jinks. That dummy by the way, seemed to have a bit of a Clark Gable vibe going for him except for being on the short side.Against his better judgment, Holt's character turns bank robber at the beginning of the story in line with his Uncle Red's (Morris Ankrum) wishes, following the death of Steve Haggerty's (Holt) father. Even with slow communication in the Old West I had to wonder why Banker Grant (Joseph Eggenton) in Remington didn't see the coincidence in Steve depositing twenty thousand dollars in his bank, a sum that matched what was robbed from the nearby bank in Cedar Fork. I don't think matinée fans of the day would have questioned it.Well Steve's not a bad guy for long if he ever was one. By helping to thwart a bank robbery by an opposing gang of outlaws, he's made town marshal of Remington with Whopper as his deputy. Now all he has to do is get the goods on villain Joel Nesbitt (Roy Barcroft) after withdrawing the original twenty grand and returning it to the sheriff of Cedar Fork. This might sound a little more complicated than it needed to be but it made for an interesting story.The biggest head scratcher for me though was the final shootout back in Remington when Steve decides to confront Nesbitt and his henchmen. With Uncle Red deciding that blood is thicker than whiskey, he helps nephew Steve take out the bad guys. Which was a minor miracle seeing as how Steve and Red walked right out in the open and took out six concealed outlaws to save the day. How'd they do that?

The Bandit Trail casts Tim Holt as a young man who loses his father Eddy Waller to a gun battle between his family and the law representing the town banker who has taken over the family ranch. When Holt arrives from the east, his uncle Morris Ankrum persuades him to join in robbing that selfsame bank.After they flee the territory the newly minted outlaws decide to rob this other town where boss Roy Barcroft rules. The plan is for Tim to take the loot from the previous robbery and deposit it in this town bank to win the confidence of the people in the town that he is has the makings of a solid and prosperous citizen as he surveys the lay of the land.Unfortunately Tim does become a solid and prosperous citizen, so much so that he gets made town marshal after helping out the original marshal in a blazing gun battle with road agents. Holt also starts falling for Janet Waldo, daughter of the new town banker.The Bandit Trail which Tim Holt is trying not to be on is a nice well played western with believable characters and a good story.

From a story by Arthur T. Horman, the screenplay by Norton S. Parker gives us, without being blatant or obvious, an unusual opening that summarizes the reason for the upcoming action.A rancher's brother is battling the sheriff who is coming to foreclose (shades of today's economy!) but the rancher himself puts a stop to the shooting. His son, played by Tim Holt, is returning home and the rancher wants peace for his arrival.The brother-uncle is played by Morris Ankrum, more often, too often, relegated to being a with but here in a pivotal role that showed he should have been given more bigger parts.His partner in the shooting is "Whopper," a name over-used in Tim Holt westerns, and here played by Lee "Lasses" White, a very capable actor but given some pretty lousy lines. As is also unfortunately common in Tim Holt westerns, the "humor" isn't funny.However, the story is a good one, and, with the great Roy Barcroft and the great Glenn Strange, it is well presented, and thus overall "The Bandit Trail" is worth watching.