Stage to Thunder Rock

In the 1960s, producer A.C. Lyles made a long string of low-budget westerns featuring stars well past their peak. Because these folks and the supporting actors were so old, the films were sometimes a bit silly and I've heard a couple folks (including me) referring to them as 'Geezer westerns'. Compared to many of his film, "Stage to Thunder Rock" isn't all that old--as the leading man (Barry Sullivan) is only 52--making him practically a teenager in A.C. Lyles' world! As for the rest of the cast, several Lyles veterans appear in this one including Lon Chaney Junior (who is in just about every Lyles film from the 60s), John Agar, Robert Strauss, Allan Jones, Scott Brady, Marilyn Maxwell and Keenan Wynn--all folks were had seen better days in their careers. The average age of these folks...probably about 55 or more! Despite the budget and advanced ages, however, most of these Lyles films are better than you'd expect. Would "Stage to Thunder Rock" also manage to be a decent film?

Sullivan plays an aging (what else?) sheriff whose final job involves bringing two robbers to justice. The catch--their father raised Sullivan (which is funny considering that Keenan Wynn played the father and he was about Sullivan's age). Along the way, he meets up with two different groups of folks who want to take his prisoner and collect the reward--maybe even if it involves killing the sheriff. For the most part, this is a very slow and meandering plot--one that seldom is involving or very interesting. The best of the characters is probably the one played by Chaney--the rest seem a bit more like caricatures than real people (such as Maxwell who plays the clichéd prostitute who wants to reform). All in all, not a terrible movie but certainly among Lyles' least successful westerns.

By the way, Mr. and Mrs. Swope's daughter, Sandy, was played by Morgan Brittany--and it's interesting to see this very pretty lady when she was just a kid.

This film is not your action-packed, gun-slinging, shoot 'em up western film. This is a western film that is more realistic than the action westerns - we have the trials and tribulations of a family in desperate need of financial help. They are about to loose everything. One daughter is desperate to leave home while the other comes back home - she had told them she was a school teacher but reveals the truth of how she made her money. There 2 bank robbers that end up at the Stageline Station and an aging sheriff that has to arrest them.

Lon Chaney plays the father Henry Parker quite believably well. Anne Seymour plays his wife Myra Parker. The two of them really do sound like your average married couple bickering. Some of the best scenes are between the two of them. I also like their relationship with their two daughters. The look and act like a real family in hard times.

It's a "quiet" film... not a lot of action but a lot of drama. Slow paced, easy to follow.

8/10

Just don't make 'em any more. Will be appreciated more as time passes, these low budget classics will be really loved a hundred years from now. Well written and acted, authentic 'Western' feel and dealing with timeless issues.

The main reason I watched this obscure western just now on Netflix streaming was because since I've been reviewing movies and TV appearances of various cast members of the original "Dallas" in chronological order since mid-June when the new one on TNT premiered, I wanted to follow them to the letter so it got me now to 1964 when the second Digger Barnes-Keenan Wynn-appeared here as the father of a couple of adult sons who were involved in a robbery and had also once taken in a now-sheriff (Barry Sullivan) as a youngster who's now got one of those sons in handcuffs having killed the other one. This was quite a compelling B-oater with notable players like Lon Chaney, Jr., Marilyn Maxwell, and-since I always like to cite whenever a player from my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life, is in something else-Angentina Brunetti as the American Indian, Sarita. Oh, and I just found out another "Dallas" connection: Katherine Wentworth herself, Morgan Brittany-who, as a pre-teen here, was credited by her real name, Suzanne Cupito-played a blind girl named Sandy Swope. So on that note, I consider Stage to Thunder Rock well worth a look.

The last gasp of the theatrically released B western was in the Sixties and the last theaters showing double bills probably had some feature like Stage To Thunder Rock on the bottom of the bill. A.C. Lyles made many of these films, some of the best of them. This isn't one of them though.

Sheriff Barry Sullivan has the task to bring in some outlaws, the catch is that the outlaw father Keenan Wynn took Sullivan in as a lad and raised him as a foster son. At the beginning though Sullivan shoots one son and apprehends the other Ralph Taeger. You know Wynn will be gunning for Sullivan and trying to free his boy.

At the same time bounty hunter Scott Brady needing money for his blind daughter Suzanne Cupito leaves her with her mother Wanda Hendrix and at the behest of city fathers Allan Jones and Robert Strauss goes after a bounty on Taeger and Wynn. And if Sullivan gets in the way too bad because they're not crazy about him either.

And still a third family mother Anne Seymour, father Lon Chaney, Jr., and daughters Marilyn Maxwell and Laurel Goodwin who run the station on the Thunder Rock line are having to pull up stakes, they owe some back taxes. Maxwell's home for a visit, but she's led a sordid life. Goodwin wants to lead any kind of life away from her parents. Chaney is henpecked and Seymour just wants the money to save the home.

A whole lot of these folks meet up at the stageline station and a lot gets thrashed out. Sad to say you do lose quite a bit of interest in how this all turns out. And in fact the climax showdown between Sullivan and Wynn is poorly, almost routinely staged.

And needless to say this whole cast as seen better days.