Bells of San Fernando

The Bells Of San Fernando is an independent production and small wonder that no studio would touch it. It was written by Duncan Renaldo who made the hero of his Spanish California drama a wandering Irishman played by Donald Woods complete with phony brogue and all.

Monte Blue is a Spanish Don who owns the land in San Fernando Valley. But he lives in Spain and turns over the affairs of his estate to overseer Anthony Warde. Warde who runs the place like Kim family runs North Korea wants to marry Gloria Warren, but she likes Woods. In addition there's gold discovered here some fifty years before the Gold Rush. The priest wants to make a church bell using it as an alloy. But others have more secular ideas about what to do with it.

This was one strange story and hard to believe it came from one of the people who played the Cisco Kid. Warde comes over like Snidely Whiplash, Woods' accent is totally unconvincing and the story is laughable.

After seeing this, no one wanted to make the San Fernando Valley their home.

The San Fernando Valley is run by Anthony Warde with an iron fist. He has stationed guards at the only pass that allows entrance or exit from the valley, and allows no one to come or go. He's been bleeding the residents dry in order to accumulate a personal fortune, after which he plans to bugger off back to Spain.

He has decided to marry Gloria Warren, the daughter of local bellmaker Byron Foulger, though she's in love with Donald Woods, an Irishman who wandered into the valley after being shipwrecked and has stayed because he's a skilled artisan. Woods opposes the marriage and is forced to go into hiding to avoid Warde's men. Woods and Warren plan on escaping the valley and appealing to the governor personally to remove Warde.

This would be a pretty average low budget western of the period were it not for the fact that EVERY actor is doing some kind of terrible accent. That plus really slack pacing in the middle make the barely over an hour run time seem quite a bit longer.