The Arizona Raiders

"The Arizona Raiders" (1936) is what I call an "uneven film". They took a pretty good Zane Grey story and then assembled an excellent ensemble of actors; but Paramount Pictures tried to bring the thing in on a shoestring. Even by the low budget standards of the one-hour "B" westerns of its day this one stands out as a cheap production. Lots of lame stock footage poorly matched with studio close-ups and coupled with clumsily staged action sequences made even weaker by having key portions of the action happening off screen.

Fortunately there are enough good performances that overall the film ranks pretty high on the pecking order of these Saturday matinée features. Larry "Buster" Crabbe of Olympic swimming and "Flash Gordon" fame plays the standard wondering cowpoke western hero. Like a lot of famous non-actors who got work in the movies he pretty much plays himself in every part, but he has a nice relaxed screen presence that fits this particular character especially well. Character actor and Johnny Mack Brown sidekick Raymond Hatton provides a lot of comic relief as Buster's sidekick (what a surprise) who is a weird combination of Doc Holiday and Uncle Joe from "Petticoat Junction". And Johnny Downs nicely underplays one of his earnest young men characters; named Alonzo "Lonesome" Mulhall.

The prize of the cast is a very young Marsha Hunt in one of her first roles. Hunt was the Janet Leigh of her era; there is quite a physical resemblance in addition to which both actresses were a little too intelligent looking for the movie business. Which did have the advantage of giving almost all the characters they played a subtle kind of dimensionality. The film would have benefited from a few more shots of Marsha (especially some better close-ups) but she is in enough scenes and there is enough excellent acting demonstrated to make the film mandatory viewing for her fans.

The three male stars are essentially a mismatched version of the "Three Mesquiteers" who assist the female owner of the Spanish Peaks Ranch to foil a plot to steal her herd of horses. The film gets unintentionally hilarious in its climatic stampede scene as the stock footage background projection transforms a modest size herd into enough horses to outfit several dozen regiments of cavalry.

The Lions Gate DVD is not an especially good print but its Special Features are a real treasure. These include two documentary style films made by Zane Grey and a third documentary about the author himself who was a very interesting character.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.