Cyclone Fury

Johnny is a young Indian boy who falls heir to thousands of wild horses when his adoptive white father is murdered by henchmen of the town's leading citizen, Grat Hanlon. With the aid of his protector Steve Reynolds, he acquires an Army contract to deliver 300 horses a month to the cavalry. Hanlon, desiring the contract himself, and his men set out to keep the contract from being fulfilled.

A pleasant Durango kid western with the usual thrilling action and melodious singing. Well-edited, the plot is glued together fine, and Smiley Burnette's humour doesn't overdrown the story. Matter of fact, he's helping the Durango kid rather than acting like a fool nonstop. Also, Clayton - better known as the Lone Ranger - is the bad guy and does a good job.

Previous comment stated Clayton Moore was soon to be The Lone Ranger at the time this film came out; he had already been portraying The Lone Ranger on television since 1949. He took a break for 2 years in 1952 and 1953 after filming "The Legend of the Lone Ranger." Someone else played the role for that couple of years. So he played in a number of films during that break--always recognizable because of his voice; another actor with a very similar voice, Robert Lowery, was in films at this time also, mostly westerns it seems like. Lowery appeared in a Gunsmoke episode or two in the 60's and you'd swear it was Clayton Moore.

Mark Roberts has gotten a government lease and a contract to supply 300 wild horses to the Army every month, and is shot dead by Clayton Moore and his henchmen. His contract is inherited by little Louis Lettieri, and it's up to Charles Starrett to make sure that matters turn out well. Smiley Bunette is along for comic relief and if you look closely, you can spot Merle Travis in one of his four movie appearances as a backup musician before he made a name for himself.

The shrinking market for B westerns had forced some major economies on the series and Columbia had responded by using stock footage and cutting in major sequences from earlier Durango Kid movies. The editing is very good, but if you look closely, you can see that the film stock doesn't match perfectly. Still, it's an amusing entry in the series.

It was also the last movie that Clayton Moore released before he hit it big on the small screen. This came out on mid-August of 1951. The following month, THE LONE RANGER made the switch from radio to television. After fourteen years of movies, Moore was finally a star.

It's the next-to-last year of the Durango Kid episodes, featuring the duo of Charles Starrett and his sidekick, Smiley Burnette, who - along with Merle Travis' Bronco Busters - croons a couple of tunes that barely fit in. The bad guy in this one is Clayton Moore, the soon-to-be TV Lone Ranger, as Grat. His plan includes the killing of the relativeless Brock, who promised to provide horses for the cavalry. Thereafter, Grat's gonna drive the mustangs onto his neighboring property and likely be awarded the NEW government contract, which is necessitated by Brock's death. Halfway through the mercifully-short film, however, we learn that Brock DOES have an heir - an adopted, orphaned Indian boy, on who's behalf Starrett, Burnette and the tribesmen try to beat a deadline for producing the animals. An attempt, I think, to cater to the kiddies, flocking to the Saturday afternoon matinee; therefore, too juvenile for my taste.

During the last two years of Columbia's lengthy run of Durango Kid westerns, the production team was forced to make budget cuts. This resulted in fewer supporting players and, especially, shooting less new material and reusing older footage to bring each film up to the 54-minute mark. Sometimes this method was very obvious, with the new footage setting up flashbacks that were often confusing or distracting. CYCLONE FURY avoids the flashbacks and offers an hour of pleasing western action and music.

The big surprise is that only about half of the footage was photographed for this picture, and the other half is borrowed from older Durangos. The first reel is taken from PRAIRIE RAIDERS, the musical numbers are taken from GALLOPING THUNDER, the Smiley Burnette horseback chase is from CHALLENGE OF THE RANGE; and the smoke-signal and Indian-tribe scenes are from LARAMIE. The film editor added even more stock shots of wild-horse roundups. Script writer Barry Shipman, an old hand at interpolating old clips into new stories, ties it all together so cleverly that the seams are hidden fairly well, and the new footage keeps the story moving forward instead of flashing back. To give you an idea of how careful the new staging is, some of the old footage had the actors outdoors exhaling icy breath -- and the new footage with villain Clayton Moore matches it!

Columbia's number-one cowboy star, the durable Charles Starrett, is still an impressive figure after 16 years of westerns. He handles his dual role of stalwart cowboy and masked crusader with aplomb, and he throws the best punch in the movies. Smiley Burnette's comedy relief is a matter of taste, but in CYCLONE FURY he isn't quite as imbecilic as usual, and he actually sings one of his songs straight, in a persuasive tenor. Clayton Moore as Durango's main opposition is par for this series, and fans who know Moore only as the Lone Ranger might be surprised at how well he carries off a bad-guy role.

CYCLONE FURY is a masterpiece of film editing, out of necessity rather than creativity, and is a fine exhibit of the waning days of B-western production.