Lack of good storyline.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The first, by a decade, of 4 Hollywood films I'm familiar with, with a story centered around a large cattle drive northward out of Texas. The others are "Red River", "The Tall Men" and "Cowboy". They are all quite different from each other, and each is well worth a look, if you like epic westerns. This early film is typically disparaged as much the least of the 4. But after taking a look, I can say it certainly doesn't deserve this categorization. Some complain about the acting of stars Randy Scott and Joan Bennett, but I don't find anything terribly wrong. in a role tailor-made for Gary Cooper, Randy looks and acts the part well. Joan obviously is no cowgirl, but otherwise does fine. I would say this has the most complex plot and best balance of humor and drama of the 4 films, with the fresh aftermath of the Civil War playing a much more prominent part in the screenplay. We have 3 'old timers' to spearhead much of the humor: Walter Brennan, who returned to "Red River", Francis Ford: older acting and directing brother of John Ford is peg-legged 'Uncle Dud', and May Robson, as Joan's pioneer grandmother. We have busy character actor Robert Barrat playing the chief villain, Isaiah Middlebrack: an oily money-grubbing Yankee come to steal Texan land from landowners who can't pay all the new taxes on everything, including cattle. He plays it as a stereotypical gruff-voiced villain, come to prey on vulnerable women, especially. There's Robert Cummings; Scott's competitor for the affections of Joan. He's sort of the equivalent of Dunson in "Red River", pursuing the wrong choices to Scott's right choices. Through most of the film, Joan supports him, but after the failure of his venture to ally with Maximillian against the Juarez rebels in Mexico, and then his support of the new Ku Klux Klan anti-negro organization, she decides that he's a loser fanatic, and that Scott's character is a winner, with an eye for a realistic future. "Red River" provided another tall tale of the first cattle drive from deep in Texas to the new railhead in Abilene, KS. It too includes a stampede(but only one), several hostile Indian encounters, and conflicts between the principle characters. In some ways, it's more polished, but I think you will enjoy this film at least as much. The film starts out looking like it might turn into something more akin to the later Wayne-starring "The Undefeated", based on the historic attempt of General Shelby to join forces with Mexico's Maximillian, rather than surrendering to Union forces. However, Randy's persistence turned it into a "Red River" primer, instead.As in "Red River", the film cattle were nearly all Herefords, rather than the historical longhorns, which were nearly extinct, by then. The semi-wild longhorns were uniquely well adapted to do well on long drives in this climate, provided they weren't pushed too fast. Actually, before the Civil War, longer drives to California were undertaken to take advantage of high prices in the gold mining districts.The film begins with a steamboat arriving at the town of Indianola, TX. I wondered if this was a purely fictitious name, thus I checked it out. Turns out Indianola was a major seaport of the central Texas coast in this era, but was later wiped out twice by hurricanes and associated fires, thus abandoned as a ghost town. It's main competitor: Galveston, suffered a similar fate in 1900, but was rebuilt.Presently available as part of the Classic Western Round-up, volume 2 DVD set, along with "The Man from the Alamo", "California", and "The Cimarron Kid"

An exceptionally good epic western starring Randolph Scott --- before he regularly got top billing. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the North (who quite incidentally had failed at that point to free their own slaves -- including those owned by General Grant) have sent the carpetbaggers into Texas to steal the land and cattle from the surviving Texans. But not all Texans will stand for it.......While this film quite rightly sides with the ex-Confederates, not all the Union guys are portrayed as devils. The Union troops are pretty much cast as regular American guys who sometimes have to carry out ill advised orders from evil minded superiors.The turmoil will lead to the first major cattle drive from Texas ranches to the new rail line in Abeline, Kansas. Even though the beef will be destined to feed undeserving people in the North, that's where they head --- fighting tough country, Indians, and a lot more.Recently paired with California on a DVD, you get two good westerns for the rental price of one.

Some of today's viewers might be a bit put off by what they see as racism in the beginning. Just remember not to judge other times by the current time in which you dwell. Black Union soldiers did make themselves unwelcome in post Civil War South. Carpetbaggers did go to the South to take advantage. The South WAS desperately poor after the war and unfair taxes were levied. These are historical facts which do not take sides. The writer took the facts and the attitudes, of both sides, and wove them into this story. Randolph Scott as a former Confederate who wanted the country reunited instead of taken over by Mexico. He said that all Yankees were not like the ones pushing their way around Texas, as he had met them in the war. The Union officer felt the same about many former Confederates. The movie showed this as the beginning of understanding between former foes. The acting was good. Perhaps one of Scott's better performances. Mae Robson was great and reminded me of Beula Bondi. Robert Cummings (well before his TV successes) was the former Confederate officer who could not accept the loss of the war. Joan Bennett was beautiful as the center of the love triangle between Scott, Cummings and herself. Character actors brought the film along quite well as they often do - Walter Brennan, Raymond Hatton, Frances Ford, Robert Barrat, Harvey Stephens. And there was Richard Denning with a small speaking part before his Mr. North fame. There was a most believable fight scene in the streets between Union troops and former confederates. It was well directed. There was an action scene of wagons, horses and cattle running from brush fire set by Indians that was very well done considering this was before digital special effects. The movie moved along nicely from the very beginning with plenty of Western excitement. Be sure to catch this Western if you get the chance. Although it has some twists and turns, it is still a good old fashioned Western.

This was a big budget effort for Paramount in 1938. Westerns after years of being relegated to the B picture market were just starting to come back with major player casts. This concerns the a fictional adaption of the first cattle drive from Texas to Abilene, Kansas following the Chisholm Trail. Howard Hawks did the same story a decade later with Red River only he did it far better.Hawks in Red River contents himself with a line or two explaining the economic situation in Texas, post Civil War. Here a good quarter of the film is taken up with it. And the kind of racism expressed wouldn't fly today at all. In the first 10 minutes of the film we see a black Union Army soldier sauntering down the street saying, "Union Army coming." with a crowd of defeated Confederates scowling. Never mind that that man had just fought for his freedom. Right after that the veterans see some of their brethren working the docks of the port of Indianola and one remarks that that wasn't the kind of job a white man should be doing. I'm sure that longshoremen everywhere got a charge out of that.Anyway our two leads are Joan Bennett, an unreconstructed rebel who is the granddaughter of May Robson who owns a lot of cattle and land, but has no liquid assets to pay the Yankee carpetbagger taxes. She's involved in gunrunning to a group of rebels at large of whom her sweetheart Bob Cummings is one. He and his cavalry troop are going to join Maximilian in Mexico and when Max is finished putting down his rebels, they're coming back to throw out the Yankees. The other lead is Randolph Scott who is a Confederate veteran, but who realizes the war is over and we have to make a living.His idea is to drive May Robson's cattle and sell them in Abilene where the railroad has reached. They have to sneak them out from under the nose of Robert Barrat, the local carpetbagger administrator who wants to seize them and the land for taxes imposed by the carpetbagger occupational government. That by the way sets the scene for the film's most memorable moment as May Robson drinks Robert Barrat under the table and Scott, Bennett and the rest of the hands sneak off with the herd.After that it's the usual situations one expects from westerns involving cattle drives. They pick up Bob Cummings along the way whose troops have been annihilated by the Juaristas. Bob Cummings also tells Bennett of a new movement he's getting involved in called the Ku Klux Klan. By the end of the film with all the trials and tribulations they've gone through, guess who Bennett winds up with?Later on this would be routine stuff for Randolph Scott. He and Bennett work well together. They get good support from Walter Brennan, Raymond Hatton, Harvey Stephens, Francis Ford, and most of all May Robson and Robert Barrat. A previous reviewer said Barrat is a buffoon and to be sure he is. Barrat is the kind of idiot that could only rise to the top in a situation like carpetbagger Texas. He probably is somebody's idiot brother-in-law and got the job through influence. That doesn't make him any less sinister. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.This film is also an example of how the studios and the recording industry work hand in glove. A song called Silver on the Sage was written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger for the film. It's sung around the campfire in the usual singing cowboy tradition that was so popular back then. It's sung by Eddie Dean who later became a movie cowboy star in his own right. But Paramount just happened to have THE number one recording artist of the century under contract at the time. They persuaded Bing Crosby to record it for Decca and it enjoyed a modest sale, not one of Bing's bigger hits. But Robin and Rainger did much better that year with a song they wrote for another Paramount star for The Big Broadcast of 1938. That would be Thanks for the Memory and the film's star Bob Hope. It won the Oscar for best song that year.Nice film, good performances, but see Red River first.