The Texas Rangers

Beautifully filmed, SuperCineColor production from Columbia pictures, with a good cast. George Montgomery and Noah Berry are ex-outlaws-turned-Texas Rangers, sent out to help round up the gang they used to ride with. Gale Storm plays a feisty newspaper lady who don't cotton much to Montgomery on account of he was with the outlaws who gunned down her father, the Sheriff, before Montgomery turned into a good guy.

Montgomery plays one of those a man-in-the-middle characters: he infiltrates the outlaw gang, but the Texas Rangers think he's gone bad again. Nobody believes he's a good guy except the lovely and faithful Miss Storm, after Montgomery works his charm on her. Meanwhile, the outlaw boss knows Montgomery is a spy, so they plan to kill him after he helps with a million-dollar train robbery

Action? Dern tootin', pardner! After being shot several times and almost falling off the train, Montgomery slugs it out with an outlaw for control of the engine while the rest of the gang rides alongside, shooting at him. The outlaw tries to feed him into the boiler! Montgomery wins the fight when he sticks the outlaw's gun down the man's pants and pulls the trigger! Ouch .. . ('This is for shootin' my kid brother in the back, you low-down varmit!')

Not exactly 'The Magnificent Seven', but good Western fun from the colorful 1950s.

In so many ways, this is typical Hollywood.

History is botched so thoroughly, this script becomes caricature.

Despite a great cast, and a pretty good story, watching it was painful for me because of all the character names: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, John Wesley Hardin, and so many other real villains of history are thrown into the mix here.

Naturally, being bad guys, most of them get bumped off -- and it is really infuriating to watch because all those people had real deaths at other places and times.

Why?

Why not just make up other names and present a nice fictional story? It would have been a much better movie.

Truth to tell, the only thing I had seen directed by Phil Karlson before catching THE TEXAS RANGERS on TV was a 1970s flick entitled WALKING TALL, which was neither good nor bad but somehow stayed in my memory.

As other viewers have pointed out, the great thing about THE TEXAS RANGERS is that famous names bunch together so you almost feel you are watching history unfold. In this case, you have baddies like Sam Bass,John 'Wes' Hardin, the Sundance Kid, Butch Cassidy, and more all planning and riding hard to carry out train robbery that would set the government back quite a lotta dough.

Good old John Carver (played by George Montgomery) plays the fake bandit with sheriff and Pinkerton detectives in the background, assisted by pretty Gale Storm (sounds tempestuous!) and they somehow sink that gang of evil doers. Carver gets shot up in his left arm but is still nimble and strong enough to go around the train and take care of Rudabaugh and other heavies.

Pleasant Western with solid cinematography and competent stunt work, bringing back memories of the 1950s to anyone who lived in those days when the Western began to undergo re- and de-construction, paving the way for spaghetti. 7/10.

When I was a kid and watching B films like this on television because generally they were the first to be sold there, I used to love these westerns where a gang of famous outlaw names band together for a united force of banditry in the old west. Such a film is The Texas Rangers, not to be confused with the Paramount film that starred Fred MacMurray in the Thirties. Different studio, different plot.

William Bishop plays the gentlemanly, but deadly Sam Bass and he's put together quite an all star lineup of outlaws in the old west. Such desperadoes as Dave Rudabaugh, John Wesley Hardin, King Fisher and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid all in one gang.

The answer is for Texas to reform the Texas Rangers and John Litel the captain as gotten a release for outlaws George Montgomery and Noah Beery, Jr. to set a pair of outlaws to catch some outlaws.

Here's where an otherwise good film gets colossally stupid. If you're going to do that, create a false escape from prison. But Litel doesn't do that and newspaper editor Gale Storm whose father was accidentally shot in shootout that Montgomery and Beery were involved in prints their names and mission in her paper. I mean, really.

Still with that handicap Montgomery gets the job done. Did you think he wouldn't?

I have to point out two standout performances the first being William Bishop as Sam Bass. One elegant and deadly killer and no one's fool. The second is that of Jerome Courtland playing Montgomery's younger brother who has an extremely touching death scene.

If only they had given Montgomery and Beery a cover story.

A nice clean action movie, beautiful scenery, a decent script, and a long list of major movie stars including John Dehner, Douglas Kennedy, and John Doucette.

George Montgomery plays his part well. (Note to "A Team" fans: as a Texas Ranger, Montgomery bears no resemblance to "Colonel Hannibal Smith").

Gale Storm is cute and convincing in her role, but just a bit over the top. The writers throw in a snappy little boy named "Jimmy" to make the movie entertaining for children.

Yes, there are numerous historical inaccuracies, but so what, it's a movie, not a documentary. We know that in real life, all of those outlaws never joined up with each other. The Sundance Kid is believed to have died in Bolivia, not in Texas,and the real John Wesley Hardin was a mean, vicious killer, not a gentleman. And so forth.

But the premise of Sam Bass robbing a train of $60,000 and then dying in Round Rock, Texas is historically correct. There are roads in Texas named after Sam Bass.

This movie is largely based upon the second incarnation of "The Texas Rangers". Following the Civil War, lawlessness abounded in Texas. In addition to hostile Indian tribes, Texans were continually accosted by gangs of outlaws and marauders. The Governor of Texas summoned Confederate Major John B. Jones (played here by actor John Litel) to head up a team of lawmen. The rest is history.

I rate "The Texas Rangers" 8 stars.