gary-64659

Unlike most of the unadulterated admirers here, I have mixed feelings about High Chaparral. Yes, it was one of the best western of the late Sixties (though it never approached Gunsmoke or the late lamented Rawhide, and apart from the short-running The Outcasts, Cimarron Strip and about on a par with Lancer and Hondo), because Bonanza had taken a terrible dip in quality of average episode after Pernell Roberts left, and there were so few westerns still running by the end of the decade to compete with. The Virginian had become uneven, and The Big Valley somewhat soapish. Chaparral was best at the end only for lone-man dramas featuring Cameron Mitchell (as brother Buck on a mission). The distraction of "Blue Boy" and his ever-ongoing growing pains had gone. But the most predictable character, Victoria (Linda Cristal), as a supposedly strong woman, never learnt one lesson: Never trust a ruthless, homicidal bandido in chains and locked up in the back room when he starts to play on your sympathies. She fell for Alejandro Rey as her long-lost true love returned as a land-grabber who had her "so confused" (she told new husband-of-convenience Big John); Robert Loggia as a half-breed who tugged at her always exposed heart strings; and Ricardo Montalban as a fake revolutionary -- and maybe Cesar Romero and Fernando Lamas for all I know. Every time, she put the whole family and crew at the enemies' mercies all for the sake of her overweening 'virtue'.