"The Badlands Echo With Six-Gun Action!"14 September 1950Western55 mins
Charles Starrett once more hits the trail as "The Durango Kid" in Columbia's Across the Badlands. By now, the formula was a well-oiled machine: Starrett becomes a lawman, is challenged by the local criminal element, and ultimately goes beyond the law as the masked Durango.
Federal agent Steve Lawton works undercover with his assistant, Smiley Burnette, to track down an outlaw gang that is raiding government gold shipments bound for Fort Navajo.
Filmed at the Providencia Ranch (today's Forrest Lawn in Burbank, CA), this typical "Durango Kid" Western featured the Cass County Boys performing "Go West Young Lady" by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, in addition to series regular Smiley Burnette singing his own "It's My Turn" and "The Yodeler.
It's 1873 and the disbanded Texas Rangers have been replaced by the corrupt Texas State Police. Steve Lanning arrives posing as a wanted outlaw to get in with them in his attempt to have them replaced.
Charles Starrett plays lawman Steve Forsythe in Ridin' the Outlaw Trail. Somewhere along the line, of course, Steve is obliged to don the mask of The Durango Kid, mysterious righter of wrongs.
Charles Starrett returns as the Durango Kid in Columbia's Rough, Tough, West. For most of the film, however, Starrett is known as "Steve Holden," a former Texas Ranger who comes to a wide-open mining town to visit an old friend (Jack -- later Jock -- Mahoney).
Charles Starrett makes his final appearance as The Durango Kid, this time as Steve Reynolds, a postal inspector who has gone underground to catch the bad guys.
Popular movie trailers from 1950
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1950:
In Milan, the beggar Carlone has formed a brotherhood. Carlone's sister Anna, is a poor blind girl. One day Carlone saves a mutilated, who tried to end his days.
Arizona Ranger Larry Grant is posing as an outlaw while hunting for an outlaw gang, secretly led by Lance Corbin, that is stealing silver in Mexico and smelting it into bars for sale in the United States.
A young rogue kills an old lady to rob her. Arrested, he believes it is for this crime, hides nothing from his lawyer, who soon tells him that he is only accused of another theft prior to his crime.
Lilli Marlene, a French girl working as a bar maid in her uncle's café in Benghazi, Libya, turns out to be the girl that the popular German wartime song Lili Marleen had been written for before the war, so both the British and the Germans try to use her for propaganda purposes - especially as it turns out that she can sing as well.
Through the pattern of this film a ‘Test’ at Lord’s runs like a thread and a broadcast commentary on the match is imposed on the background of cricket as a game, a craft, an interest of a people, a piece of history.
Comments
Have you watched Across the Badlands yet? What did you think about it?