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Absolutely the worst movie.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Talbot Pierce, a notorious card shark, is thrown from a riverboat and washes on shore at an inn which also houses a forger Hazelton. Hazelton has the idea of using a forged Spanish land grant that would say Don Luis de Serrano (Pierce) would own 13 million acres of land in Arizona. The courts decide it is authentic and Don Luis takes over the land and charges high taxes, cattle tolls, and rent for his land, and then evicts them after he taken everything they have including the 3M ranch. Stony, Tucson, and Lullaby decide to strike against Don Luis by riding as white robed vigilantes Los Capaqueroes, where they hold up Don Luis' tax collectors and give the money to the next person to be evicted from the valley. While this causes confusion, the Three Mesquiteers lack the evidence that will cause an investigation. They decide to take jobs from Don Luis as hunters for Los Capaqueroes, but Stony recognizes Don Luis as Pierce, but it is too late as our heroes are discovered to be the vigilantes and sentenced to be shot. Decent B western, but nothing really new and exciting considering there was never any chemistry between Wayne and Corrigan & Terhune and it shows here. I do like the Los Capaqueroes idea but the film lacks much action and the resolution to the film is sort of a downer. Remade w/ Don Barry as Arizona Raiders and again (loosely) w/ Vincent Price in the Baron of Arizona. Rating, based on B westerns, 6.

I'm not really a fan of the old western - "B" film programmers like THE NIGHT RIDERS, but word of the reappearance of this film on television (from a friend who talked about it with me), raised my curiosity a little about it. Despite the appearance of John Wayne (who handles his "Three Meskeeter" role of "Stony" very well) and noting Ray "Crash" Corrigan's appearance in it as well, the film did not really thrill me.I suppose for a late Depression audience it was exciting enough. And they were not too bothered by historical mistakes that only people like me think about. Wayne, by the way, has one moment which I really did like. Pretending to be one of the bad guys he bullies the heroine (whom he really likes), and so disillusions her son that the boy silently pursues Wayne and his evil associates for awhile. There is also a showboat Captain later on, supposedly giving another character some vital information, who starts reminiscing about his own brilliant performance in Macbeth - a nice brief piece of ham that was welcome.The plot has a Spanish land grant upsetting the claims of hundreds of settlers in a southwestern territory. An aristocratic Mexican, Don Luis de Serrano (George Douglas) is making the claim, and apparently has the backing of the Government in enforcing them. He is backed by an adviser named Hazleton (Walter Wills), and they have even gotten a body of evil - doers as a private army. Those are the "Nightriders" of the plot.SPOILER COMING UP: Hazleton is a forger, and the scheme is a clever forgery of his. Don Luis is an actor named Talbot Pierce, who has a criminal record. This does not come out until the conclusion.Now, although it is not quite the same thing, the plot of Hazleton and Pierce is a rip-off of the plot of James Addison Reavis who tried to use forged land grants (and brilliantly forged ones they were) to give his so-called aristocratic wife title to the territory of Arizona (the subject of THE BARON OF ARIZONA). Interesting variation.The Meskeeters stumble on a sleepy eyed President James Garfield (Francis Sayles), tells him what is going on - and get his okay to support them when they produce the evidence against "Don Luis". When they get it, Wayne's girlfriend (Ruth Randall) sends a message to Washington, D.C. But as it arrives we hear Garfield getting shot! As was pointed out before by another poster, Garfield did not have enough time in his Presidency to make a trip out west like this. His Presidency lasted six months . In that period Garfield had enough time to do the following: 1) Set up his cabinet and diplomatic corps.2) Send the name of Stanley Matthews to the Congress as choice for an empty seat on the U.S. Supreme Court - Matthews was confirmed.3) Start a government prosecution of certain leading Republicans, including former Senator Thomas Dorsey, in the "Star Route Postal Frauds". 4) Support Secretary of State James G. Blaine in prosecuting U.S. business claims to a set of islands off Chile and Bolivia (at the time Bolivia had a seacoast) that were rich in nitrates.5) Get into a messy conflict with New York State's senior Senator, Roscoe Conkling, regarding Federal control over the New York City Customs House and it's management. This was a continuation of a similar confrontation from the previous Hayes Administration.Most of these acts took up his attention from March 4, 1881 to July 2, 1881. Given that he was starting his administration, and the pace of government work was slower (far slower) in 1881 than today, all five items I mentioned fully took up Garfield's attention. On a personal note, his wife Lucretia (or "Crete" as she was nicknamed) was seriously ill in May - June 1881, and Garfield was monitoring her recovery.No time for long trips into the western regions here. A trip to Elberon, N.J. in September 1881 was a last ditch attempt by his doctors to save him by using the ozone of sea air at that New Jersey resort.Why did the script writers throw in that bit about Garfield? Well, historically the death of Garfield was during the days of the old west. It was rarely used as a movie subject (if you check this web site, putting "President James Garfield" down under "Characters", there are only five films). The closest film to dealing with Guiteau is a 1968 film. A spaghetti western made in 1970 had Van Johnson as Garfield, changed the local and entire story of the assassination.I suppose that the very obscurity of Garfield's brief term prevents it from getting the exposure that the Lincoln, Kennedy, King, and even the Huey Long Case get in our films. Garfield was a competent man, but had no real opportunity to show what he could do. The sordid nature of his shooting (Guiteau wanted an ambassadorship and was never really in the running for it) reduces this murder.The scriptwriters had some idea of the shooting - though we only hear the shots and don't see it. The telegraph operator tells the messenger boy that Garfield was going to Williams College that day (that is true - he was invited to give a speech there).It's obvious that the scriptwriters were stealing a bit from the Robert Taylor - Barbara Stanwyck film, THIS IS MY AFFAIR, made a few years earlier. Taylor is a special government operative sent by McKinley to infiltrate a counterfeiting gang, who is sentenced to death just at the time McKinley (his only contact) is killed. But that had a better script and better production values. This "B" feature had very little (aside from the Duke) to compare with it.

The Three Mesquiteers were able to jump through time from one film to another. In The Night Riders, newspaper headlines are used in transitions between scenes, and those newspapers show dates in 1881. So, there are no automobiles or radios in this one, just horses and telegraphs.There is a nice plot that sets up the action for The Night Riders. A corrupt former engraver for the U.S. Mint and a crooked riverboat gambler team up to pull off a land swindle using a forged Spanish land grant. The forger, Hazleton, orchestrates everything by having Talbot, the gambler and former actor, pose as Don Luis Serrano. Immediately they start taxing and evicting the settlers on 13,000,000 acres of land.The Don's henchmen and an apprehensive sheriff run the Mesquiteers off of their ranch, and the Mesquiteers see others dealt the same fate. Stony makes a perfect John Wayne speech about what America means, and writes to President Garfield for help. The President is bound by the laws of the country and cannot help. Not content to let the Don take every settler's land, the Mesquiteers become Los Capaqueros, three masked riders that rob the tax collectors and give the money to ranchers facing eviction. As Los Capaqueros, the Mesquiteers accidentally meet with President Garfield, who is on a cross country tour. Garfield promises his help if the Mesquiteers can find evidence of something illegal. Eventually the Don raises an army to search for Los Capaqueros, and the Mesquiteers find a way to get themselves included so they can infiltrate the Don's compound. Stony is determined to prove that the Don is really Talbot. Everything ends with justice being served in Mesquiteers fashion.I have not seen all of the Mesquiteers films, but I have never seen a "3 M Ranch." Perhaps it only existed for this one film as a plot device. In almost every other movie the Mesquiteers have been some kind of federal agents, but in The Night Riders they have absolutely no connection with law enforcement at all. I must assume that the script was written without the Three Mesquiteers in mind, and adapted to fit the team later. The Night Riders has a cast with many of the B western regulars. It was fun looking for all the familiar faces. Glenn Strange and Horace Murphy are uncredited, but they both have more significant parts than the credited Tom London. Kermit Maynard had been a leading man shortly before this film. Sadly, he was destined to play supporting parts from around the time this movie was made onward. It was interesting to see Tom Tyler as one of the bad guys, because within a couple of years he would play the part of Stony Brooke through the end of the Mesquiteers series.

I imagine that Night Riders was probably done immediately after Stagecoach was finished shooting, but was not out yet. No one knew that it would be the film that would make John Wayne a huge star, so he was back doing the Three Mesquiteers western series for Republic Pictures. It is the film listed immediately after Stagecoach on IMDb and in the Films of John Wayne book.In this entry Wayne, Ray Corrigan, Max Terhune and a whole bunch of other honest folk are being tossed off their ranches by a man showing up with titles from an old Spanish land grant. The only problem here is that you're dealing with the Three Mesquiteers who ain't gonna take this lying down.The three of them, Duke included, decide to go Zorro on the bad guys. They dress up as three stylish bandits with caped hoods and call themselves, Los Capequeros. They rob the rent collectors from the "Don" and give it back to the ranchers. Even sheriff Kermit Maynard is sympathetic to them.What makes Night Riders interesting is the fact that the Three Mesquiteers go calling on President James A. Garfield who is making a goodwill trip out west. They are looking to elude the rent collectors and break in on President Garfield while he's reading in bed. Don't say much for Presidential security, but they put up their guns and Garfield doesn't give them away. And he offers to help if they can get the evidence after the Mesquiteers tell their tale.Of course Garfield never went west in the brief three months he had as President in 1881 before an assassin shot him in Washington's Union station. Oddly enough his successor Chester A. Arthur did make a trip west, a well publicized good will trip that was worked into the plot of the Robert Taylor western, Cattle King which I also reviewed. Garfield's shooting was worked in, albeit in a minor way, in the climax of Night Riders.The Garfield connection does make Night Riders somewhat interesting to watch. And the Three Mesquiteer films were a bit above average of the ordinary B picture westerns of the time.I hope no one sees that title and assumes some cartoon cat guest starred with the Duke in one of his films.