Belle Starr's Daughter

Belle Starr's Daughter shows the team trying to ease out of the then doomed cowboy B movie market - three sort of stars, reasonable production values and a plot with some attempt at resonance and shading of the characters.

Cameron proved surprisingly effective as the bad guy. He did a similar turn in a Hitchcock TV episode and the two can be considered his best work. Wally Ford is always good value and the rest get by, with Montgomery suitable as a straight arrow law man and Roman young and appealing. Isabel Jewel is a surprise, after all her dewy innocent parts of the thirties and the piece is strong on welcome character faces - Kemper, Lambert, McDonald and the rest.

The action staging is excellent and the setting adequate, even though most of the scenes are shadowless over lit. Nice touches like the menacing night "This street was full of horses" or the final "I'm hit too." Lesley Seylander proved one of the few of the B movie directors able to deliver more ambitious work.