After they dropped old Hopalong, Paramount seems to have given up on B Western series,s although they kept Pop Sherman employed until 1948. However, like the other majors, they dabbled in the occasional A Western, and COPPER CANYON is an inexplicably tired example. Ray Milland is an ex-Confederate officer (like all actors with Mid-Atlantic accents), making his way as a sideshow trick shooter, called upon to safeguard a town trying to get a copper mine up and running profitably. With Hedy Lamarr, MacDonald Carey, Harry Carey Jr. under the direction of John Farrow, there's nothing wrong, but it all seems like a gimmicky version of one of the Boetticher-Scott westerns of the coming decade. I had the feeling that everyone was trying too hard to be nonchalant, and Charles Lang's rather garish Technicolor camerawork -- although that may be a matter of poor choices in printing -- doesn't help.
