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the audience applauded

A Masterpiece!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Now I know how Bosley Crowther got his job at The New York Times. He's really on the ball, that guy. He managed to follow the plot of The Law West of Tombstone with only a quarter of the trouble I had. I couldn't make head or tail of the movie at all. Come "The End" title and I was still up in the air, so I started to watch the film again. Half an hour in, I still couldn't catch on to the plot, so I threw in the towel. Is Harry Carey supposed to be a good guy pretending to be a bad guy or a bad guy pretending to be a good guy? Bosley infers that the Carey character is supposed to be both! Now why didn't I think of that? In fact, Bosley goes many steps further. He even tackles the Tim Holt character as well. I couldn't for the life of me sort out whether Tim was a good guy pretending to be a bad guy or a bad guy pretending to be a good guy. But Bosley infers that Tim was playing a good guy who becomes a bad guy who becomes a good guy. See, it's easy if you know your movies! Bosley even sorts out what Evelyn Brent is doing in the story. I assumed her character was a just a bit touched in the head. But no! Bosley tells us that she is actually the Carey character's daughter who is unaware that Carey is her dad – and that in any case, she thinks he is dead. It's absolutely wonderful how you can infer all this just by watching The Law West of Tombstone! I didn't get any of these points at all. I found the screenplay both utterly dull and wholly confusing. Of course, Bosley had an RKO Press Book to keep him on the right track, but I just slapped the excellent Warner Archive DVD on to the machine without doing any research at all. I don't like to know a movie's plot in advance. I like to watch it unfold without having any ideas as to how it will all turn out. That's a stupid quirk, I know, but I guess I'm stuck with it!

Harry Carey plays a combination character in the lead role of The Law West Of Tombstone. He's a quick draw and a deadly shot in the tradition of Wild Bill Hickok and can spin a yarn better than Baron Munchausen. Those talents have served him well in his career in this film and like Judge Roy Bean, he's declared himself the law in the newly forming town of Martinez, Arizona as Mayor and Justice of the Peace.This was obviously a more ambitious undertaking of a film than what arrived for the movie-going public of 1938. There are whole chunks of this that obviously were left on the cutting room floor and you have to bridge quite a lot to get a coherent story.Tim Holt plays a young protégé of sorts for Carey, a young outlaw he'd like to see settle down. And Evelyn Brent plays Carey's daughter who doesn't know she's his daughter. But this film is strictly Carey's show. Allan Lane who later was a cowboy hero himself plays a young outlaw who shoots it out with Holt and comes up short and dead.It's an unusual western and one I'd like to have seen a director's cut of, but that sure isn't likely.

Well, Fellini didn't direct this one, but at times it sure seems like it. This is one odd-ball movie, with plotlines that appear out of nowhere and disappear into the same place, character motivations David Lynch couldn't understand, and behavior that sometimes suggests that everyone in the film and everyone who made it was hitting the peyote a little too hard. Harry Carey well plays Bill Barker, and one presumes he is the hero of the piece, though he gets enough undisputed disrespect from respectable characters that sometimes it's hard to know whether he's the moral center or just a none-too-bright gasbag. Tim Holt is good as the Tonto Kid, but everyone else is either not very good or is just mired so deep in the confusion that it's not possible to distinguish their talent. It's almost impossible to disentangle the plotlines, although it's fairly clear that one of them involves Barker's attempts to make a good life for the daughter he never knew. The rest of it is pretty much a jumble, and the confrontations between Barker and the McQuinn gang, and in particular a bizarre game of Russian roulette between Barker and the Tonto Kid simply defy rational explanation. And what in the world was Ward Bond doing in this--not WHY was he in it, but WHAT was he doing? He appears to be channelling his John L. Sullivan character from "Gentleman Jim," funnelled through Pancho Villa. But the purpose and intent of the character are just two of the manifold mysteries of this weird little melange. Just about the strangest thing I've ever seen that wasn't meant to be strange.

Oftentimes conventional western that regularly heads off in unconventional directions. Harry Carey (senior, not junior) is delightful as very odd character Bill Barker. Head of dancehall girls/prostitutes is named Mrs Mustache! Just read that Harry Carey, Jr is 82 and made more than 40 westerns in his career. Catch his old man in this one for a treat and movie history.