Gunmen from Laredo

Cheap outdoor saga from Columbia Pictures (filmed in ColumbiaColor!) is nothing more than a padded co-feature meant to take up space on the bottom half of a marquee. Robert Knapp shows not a smidgen of screen charisma as a vengeful husband who rides into Laredo to confront his wife's killer, winding up in prison for murder. He escapes and later frees a mercurial Mescalero girl (played by busty Jana Davi), setting off a personal feud with the Apaches. There's a fistfight and a brawl with hatchets that temporarily rouses this woebegone, wooden-Indian western filmed in L. A.'s Bronson Canyon. NO STARS from ****

A band of bad men rustle a man's cattle and then frame him for the murder of their brother. He is sent to a New Mexico prison, but the walls couldn't hold him. Once he escapes, he heads for Laredo where the men who wronged him are. Extremely corny and badly acted story that was so phony I could barely watch it. Don't corral this sway backed nag.

A man comes back from prison to take revenge on the men who framed him. Along the way he picks up the phoniest-looking Indian "maiden" in recent memory (Lucille Ball dressed herself up as Pocahontas in an episode of "I Love Lucy" and looked more authentic than this girl does) which gets him mixed up in Indian troubles. A bunch of other stuff happens, none of it interesting and all of it badly done. The acting is amateurish, even though there are several solid character actors (Paul Birch, Don Harvey, Charles Horvath) present--a result of the almost non-existent direction of producer Wallace MacDonald. The "script" is an unstructured, meandering mess; it looks like MacDonald only shot every couple of pages of it instead of the whole thing, or maybe that's just the way it was written. The "action" scenes are laughable; grade-school kids playing Cowboys & Indians could have staged them better. I'm sure that not many of the few people who saw this thing knows how it ends; it's so maddeningly poor in all departments that I can't imagine anyone sticking around to find out. I sure didn't. Don't waste your time on this dog.

Robert Knapp and Maureen Hingert (billed as Jana Davi) make a handsome couple after the former finds the latter tied to a tree - as you do - in this Columbia potboiler shot in pretty colour in what looks like a park.

The cast talk and fight, then fight and talk; but most of the action actually consists of people riding about on horseback. The End.

Gunmen from Laredo is directed by Wallace MacDonald and written by Clark E. Reynolds. It stars Robert Knapp, Jana Davi, Walter Coy, Paul Birch and Don C. Harvey.

Out to avenge the murder of his wife and friend, Gil Reardon (Knapp) hurries into Laredo to confront the culprits. Forced to draw on one of the thugs, Gil is set up for murder and sent to prison. Escaping, he meets up with a Mescalero woman who aids him on is journey through the wilderness. If they can survive the terrain and Indian attacks? Then Gil is heading back to Laredo to clear his name and get his revenge.

Straight from the bottom rung of the "B" Western ladder, is this Columbia offering filmed in Columbia Color no less! It's a poor effort, a basic case of film makers stringing a number of scenes together to pad out a movie. The acting is poor, the set design around the town of Laredo is hardly convincing, while the location photography around Bronson Canyon is decidedly flat.

However, I find myself in the unusual situation of having watched a bad Western yet feel the need to grudgingly admire it! MacDonald and Reynolds cram all they can into their picture. Shoot-outs, prison escape, chases, fist fights, sandstorm and a smouldering romance in waiting. The choreography isn't up to much, mind, but the sheer gusto and willingness to entertain is to be applauded.

It's the sort of Oater that Dad can plonk the kids in front of the TV and know they will have fun and be occupied, while he sits in his armchair relaxing with a glass of wine. 4/10