This week’s edition of
Serial Saturdays kicks off the
inaugural chapter of a brand-spanking new chapter play…though when I use that
term, I mean it in the sense that it is new to
Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.
Released on
July 1, 1941
by Universal,
Riders of Death Valley was
promoted as “the million dollar serial”…though the jury long ago decided that the
concept of the studio actually putting that amount of money into the production
is pure road apples.
Granted, there’s an impressive cast in this one—which we’ll
introduce in a minute—and the production values were a little loftier than the
usual Universal shoot-‘em-up cliffhanger; so much so that stock footage from
this one turned up in countless western serials and B-oaters churned out by the
studio in its wake. My BBFF Stacia mused
on a number of occasions while dissecting
Raiders of Ghost City (1944) whether
the stock footage in that one originated in a more exciting narrative…and
though I can’t say for certain, there’s a good bet that some of
Riders was borrowed for
Raiders.
The million-dollar budget seems more likely to have comprised
the amount of advertising promoting the serial, including a lavish pressbook
for exhibitors. Because of the hype, a
goodly number of serial fans tend to dismiss this one for retribution’s
sake…and that really does
Riders of
Death Valley a disservice. I’m not
saying
Riders doesn’t have its
faults: its plot is straight out of Westerns 101 (bad guys try to take a mine
that does not belong to them) and most of it is extended chase sequences—you
often have six good guys on the run from two or three bad guys, which seems a
little…peculiar. (The scribe who came up
with the story for
Riders, Oliver
Drake, once joked that because Universal had had success with a previous serial
entitled
Sky Raiders and one that
followed
Riders called
Sea Raiders he was surprised the studio
didn’t call this one
Land Raiders.) Some of the cliffhangers are pretty weak tea,
and though the interplay between stars Dick Foran and Buck Jones is enjoyable
it often seems like, as Hans J. Wollstein once pointed out, Jones is “perhaps
the highest paid B-western comedy relief in history.”
Also, too: my DVD copy of
this is the one released by VCI Entertainment
in 2006. Alpha Video also released a
version, and while I have not watched that one I’ve had one or two people tell
me the VCI release is the better quality of
the two. Unfortunately, the company
chose to “watermark” its logo throughout each chapter a number of times,
apparently at the bequest of the person who secured them the print. Some people tear their hair out at things
like this: my personal take is that while it is an inconvenience, it’s not
something for which I will contemplate homicide. (But you’ll probably see the watermark in
some of the screen caps, so I thought I’d give you a heads-up.)
As the opening credits begin, we are treated to the first of
what will be a total of fifteen renditions of
Ride Along, a stirring
Stout-Hearted
Men type of song specifically composed by Milton Rosen and Everett Carter
for
Riders of Death Valley…and one that
has already worn out its welcome with the first stanza. To compound this agony, the serial also makes
use of Felix Mendelssohn’s
Fingal’s
Cave Overture…which
I thought we had abandoned with
Don
Winslow of the Navy (1942). (As
always…I’m simply not that lucky.) A
friend of mine on Facebook humorously pointed out to me that having seen
Winslow before
Riders, he kept expecting a submarine to turn up in
Death
Valley whenever the song appeared on the soundtrack. Behind the credits, we find a team of ridin’
cowboys, so let us introduce them to you now.
Dick Foran gets top billing as Jim Benton, the de facto
leader of the gang—in fact, the gang of good guys is frequently referred to
throughout the serial as “Benton Riders.”
Foran could very well be called “the matinee idol of B movies;” he
started out as a band singer and was then signed to a contract by Warner
Brothers to be a supporting player—his best-known Warner’s gig is probably that
of Bette Davis’ would-be paramour in
The
Petrified Forest (1936). He also
made quite a few B-westerns for WB, and then later moved to Universal and did
the same for them while being versatile enough to appear in such movies as
The Mummy’s Hand (1940) and
Ride ‘em Cowboy (1942), an Abbott &
Costello romp. This was actually Foran’s
second Western serial for Universal: his first was 1940’s
Winners of the West, in which he co-starred with Anne Nagel,
previously seen here on
Serial Saturdays in both
Don Winslow of the Navy and
The Green Hornet (1940).
In the role of Pancho Lopez is Leo Carrillo…and yes, considering
that Carrillo later played Pancho in both several Cisco Kid programmers and the
1950-56 TV series, this is kind of spooky to say the least. Carrillo was a master of dialects, and it
would do him a disservice to simply dismiss him as Cisco’s sidekick: his movie
credits include
The Guilty Generation
(1931),
Four Frightened People
(1934),
If You Could Only Cook (1935)
and
History is Made at Night (1937).
And as Borax Bill—though I don’t think it’s “borax” in the
sense of the twenty-mule team and soap—we have our old pal Guinn “Big Boy”
Williams: a character legend that appeared in a gazillion B-pictures and
westerns usually as a quick-to-anger but well-meaning lunkhead. Williams appears in such films as
The Glass Key (1935—in the part that
William Bendix played in the better-known 1942 version),
Dodge City
(1939),
Castle on the Hudson (1940),
You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) and
Station West (1948). I don’t know if Antenna TV is still running
those repeats of
Circus Boy on the weekends but I used to catch Guinn in those
on occasion, as Pete the canvas man.
Oh, and though he’s mentioned in the opening credits (he
just doesn’t get his very own picture), character great Glenn Strange is also
riding with Jim Benton and his boys, and he answers to “Tex.” The man who would later become famous both as
the Frankenstein monster (after Karloff said “no mas”) and bartender Sam Noonan
on Gunsmoke
is no stranger to the B-western, but he also had bit parts in such serials as Flash Gordon (1936), The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939) and Flying G-Men (1939).
Our heroes dismount just in time for the orchestra to strike
up Fingal’s Cave.
(Oh, movies are magic!) Borax Bill makes his way over to a spring to
wash the dust out of his throat, and we welcome (okay, maybe that’s not the
word I should use) the first of many “quarrels” between B.B. and his pal
Pancho.
PANCHO: Here—why you want to put
your dirty face in my horse’s water?
BORAX: Who, me?
PANCHO: Yeah, you! (As Borax finishes and
gets to his feet) Don’t you know I gotta held your horse and you put germans in
the water?
BORAX: Oh, crawl under a rock…
Okay, so it’s not Noel Coward. But Jim and Tex
find all this tres amusing…and I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that
they spend a lot of time outdoors.
TEX: Aimin’ to camp here, Jim?
JIM: No, we gotta go on to
Stovepipe Wells and meet Smokey…
BORAX (looking off into the distance):
You ain’t gonna meet Smokey in Stovepipe Wells today…
PANCHO: Hey, look! There comes Smokesie now!
Smokesie…er, Smokey, is a
Benton
rider played by another character great: Noah Beery, Jr. Best known to us couch potatoes as Joseph
“Rocky”
Rockford on TV’s greatest
private-eye series of all time,
The Rockford Files, the son of Noah,
Sr. (and nephew of Wallace) also has an extensive B-western resume while appearing
in such serials as
Ace Drummond
(1936) and
Overland Mail (1942).
SMOKEY: Hey, Jim—Kirby and Davis is
havin’ a meetin’ in the Panamint Saloon this afternoon…they’re organizin’ a
miners’ protective association…
BORAX: Them hombres ain’t aimin’ to
protect nobody but themselves…
JIM: You’re right, Borax…
“Your grammar is atrocious…but you’re right…”
JIM: …if Kirby and Davis put over
that protective association they’ll have control over every claim in Death
Valley…
PANCHO: I guess purty soon all the
miners is gonna be workin’ for them…no, Mr. Jim Benton?
TEX: For once you’re right, Pancho…
PANCHO: I think, uh, maybe we went
to that meeting…no?
JIM: You’re right…let’s get movin’…
BORAX: Hey—how come they didn’t
hold the meetin’ tonight…it’d be a
lot easier for everybody to get there…?
JIM: That’s a cinch to figure out,
Borax…
PANCHO: When men of Mr. Kirby and
Mr. Davis don’t want all the people to go there, no?
JIM: That’s right, Pancho…
“And you could do with a little cracking of the English
books, too.”
JIM: …they only want their friends
and the miners they know they can control…
SMOKEY: So…we’d better get ramblin’
now…huh?
You guys should have gotten ramblin’ a couple of dialogue
passages back and maybe discussed all this while riding. (I don’t know what they’re gonna talk about
on the way to Panamint. “A lot of weather we’ve been having lately, huh?”) Jim tells Smokey to stay behind to rest his
horse (this is a plot device that will pay dividends soon) and the rest of his
riders mount up and ride to…
Panamint! I remember
when they used to sponsor Bob Hope, by the way.
(Panamint…now with extra Irium!)
Okay, now that I’ve got those jokes out of my system we drop on into the
Panamint Saloon, owned by prominent bidnessman Joseph Kirby (James Blaine). His partner in no-goodism is Rance Davis,
played by
SBBN crush Monte Blue (whom
I admittedly often confuse with cowboy star Monte Hale—do not ask me why,
because I have no explanation) and the third man attending the meeting in the
backroom of the saloon is lackey Dan Gordon, as essayed by William Hall.
KIRBY: This association will give
us absolute control over every once of gold mined in Death Valley…and
I don’t intend to let anything stand
in our way…
DAVIS: You’re gonna run into some tough opposition, Kirby…
KIRBY: The only opposition I’m worried about is Benton and his riders…and they won’t be here…
Before Kirby can begin tenting his fingers, a figure walks
into the saloon, looking every picture of the Western badass. That man is…
…you got it, pilgrim.
Charles Freaking Bickford.
Charles Bickford in his only serial, playing the meanest hombre who ever
drew a breath: Wolf Reade (even his name is badass). This is one of several reasons why I’m such a
big fan of this serial—Bickford has got to be the most unlikely actor to ever
grace a chapter play. I leave out Bela
Lugosi, of course, because Bela was in several (including
S.O.S. Coast Guard and
The Phantom Creeps)—and I don’t include
thespians who were just starting out…like George Macready in
The Monster and the Ape (1944) or
Jennifer Jones (still being billed as Phyllis Isley) in
Dick Tracy’s G-Men (1939).
But let’s get back to Wolf Reade, who strolls into both the
bar and backroom like he owns the joint.
WOLF: Let’s see your hole card, Kirby…
KIRBY: You sound like the dealer in this game, Wolf…
WOLF: I am…
KIRBY: Is this a showdown?
WOLF: It is…
GORDON: Wait a minute, Wolf…we
ought to be able to get together and…
DAVIS (interrupting): I’d like to say something…
WOLF: Shaddup…
Wolf tells Davis
to “get over there where I can see ya” as Kirby pleads with his partner not to
make any sudden moves around Reade.
KIRBY: What’s got you all riled up,
Wolf?
WOLF: I wanna know why you’ve
ordered me to hold up the Berdoo stage today…
KIRBY: Why? The usual reason, of course…
“I’ve got a payroll to meet…”
DAVIS: Why, there’s $50,000…
WOLF: Come on, Kirby…answer my question…
KIRBY: I have answered it!
WOLF: No you ain’t…but I will…you got Lafe Hogan’s note for
$50,000…that money don’t get here by noon, you take over his bank and
everything else he owns!
KIRBY: Well…what of it?
“Well…I’m on record as saying that’s just a bit unseemly,
old man.”
WOLF: From now on I’m cuttin’ in…fifty-fifty on every one
of your deals… (Indicating Davis and Gordon) You can take care of these two
lizards out of your share…
“And…I want a company horse.” Kirby stops to ponder Wolf’s proposition, and
then graciously agrees to Wolf’s terms because Reade is not a man you want to
be on the bad side of, particularly if you have family. “You win,” concedes Kirby.
“This time,” mutters Davis. Wolf asks him to repeat that last
remark. “I said I was glad you got the
whole thing settled,” he says mealy-mouthed.
KIRBY: Now that holdup, Wolf…no unnecessary killings…remember?
WOLF: You handle your end…I’ll take
care of mine…
Something tells me this is not going to be a good day because
innocent people are going to die. After
Wolf leaves and heads out to do that job he dearly loves, Gordon speaks up:
“Gee, boss…for a minute there I thought you were gonna plug him…”
“Well, I’m not in the habit of cutting off my nose to spite
my face,” breathes Kirby in a sigh of relief.
There is but a brief intercut shot of Wolf riding like the wind on his
horse through the hills, and then the scene shifts back to Kirby, Davis and
Gordon entering the saloon from their office to start the miners’ meeting.
GORDON (rapping on a table for
attention): Order, please, gentlemen…order…
KIRBY: Men…this meeting is called
to organize an association to protect you miners in Death Valley…
An actor whom I don’t recognize (and playing a prospector
type) asks: “And what are you and Davis gonna get out of this, Kirby?” (I couldn’t swear to it, but I believe that’s
Gabby Johnson, formerly of Rock Ridge.)
KIRBY: Nothing! Davis and I will finance all claims…prospecting expeditions…transporting ore to Panamint for
smelting…
PROSPECTOR (getting up from his
seat): I don’t believe a word you say, Kirby!
“…and no sidewindin' bushwackin', hornswagglin' cracker
croaker is gonna rouin me bishen cutter…”
Before Gabby can continue with any more of his authentic frontier gibberish,
an unidentified cowboy seated next to Gabby rises and connects with a right
cross, sending to Johnson to the floor.
Gordon continues to press for order.
GORDON: …quiet, please…Mr. Kirby
wants to help you all…
“…off a sixty-foot cliff…”
Gabby, rubbing his chin, says to the man seated next to him: “Why ain’t
Jim Benton here? Kirby’s sure gonna put this thing over…”
KIRBY: Now, men…you’ve all heard my
proposition…any comments? Those in favor
of this association stand up…
JIM (as he and the riders come
through the swinging doors): Keep your seats…everybody…
There is a good deal of hubbub in the saloon resulting from
Jim and the riders’ entrance…but the funniest is from Gabby Johnson, who sort
of wistfully waves at
Benton and
cries out softly “Hi, Jim…” (“Jim is my
friend…he will erase the stain of my painful humiliation, you betcha…”) Jim then swaggers over to where the three
scoundrels are.
JIM: Kirby…how can you hope to form
a miners’ protective association when half of the miners are out working their
claims?
KIRBY: It’s not my fault the miners aren’t here to speak
for themselves…
JIM: I say it is…you only invited
these miners here you thought you could intimidate…
KIRBY: Are you hinting this meeting
isn’t on the level?
JIM: I’m not hinting, Kirby…I’m telling
you…
Jim then addresses the saloon contingent: “Boys, there’ll be
no association until all the miners are here to vote.” Well, Joseph Kirby didn’t get to where he is
today by simply being a ruthless essobee…so he decides to walk away in
temporary defeat by postponing his scheme until all the miners are able to show
up for the meeting. And to demonstrate
his heart’s in the right place, he’s buying drinks for the house. (Actually, it might have been smarter to do
that in the first place—with those yahoos drunk, passing that association
legislation would have been easier than falling out of a rowboat.)
“You hear that, boys?” asks Gordon, in prime suck-up
mode. “Mr. Kirby’s buying drinks for the
house—step up and name your poison!” The
three scalawags, having licked their wounds, disappear back into their office.
PANCHO: I guess this is going to be
the end of this…uh…assoc…
BORAX: Association…
PANCHO: Assocination…no?
BORAX: Yes…
PANCHO: Well, I say no…
BORAX: All right then…no…
PANCHO: What it gonna be—yes or no?
BORAX: I don’t think they’ll hold
another meeting…can’t you understand?
PANCHO (shaking his head in the
affirmative): No…
BORAX (disgustedly): Adobe brain…
Abbott…Costello…you’re needed on stage twelve. (Actually, the funniest thing about these
exchanges is watching Glenn Strange’s reactions…he later said in an interview
he had a difficult time keeping a straight face around Carrillo during
filming.) Back in the bad guys’ office:
DAVIS: How long are you gonna let Benton interfere in our
business?
KIRBY: Not any longer than it takes
me to find a way to get rid of him…
DAVIS: Well, it’s high time!
Well, what did you expect—you guys are buying the
drinks! As Jim and his boys are availing
themselves of the open bar, Smokey enters the saloon carrying a half-dead
prospector.
SMOKEY: Where’s Doc Murphy?
BORAX (referencing the prospector):
It’s Chuckawalla Charlie!
“I get knocked down/But I get up again/You’re never gonna
keep me…” Oh, wait a second—I’m thinking of Chumbawamba. My bad.
Jim and his gang help Smokey bring Charlie (Frank Austin) over to one of
the tables; Jim asks for some water but
Tex
grabs a drink that’s conveniently at the table, offering that “this will do him
more good.”
JIM: Where did you find him?
SMOKEY: Near the waterhole, after
you fellas left me…his canteen was clear dry…
JIM (to the prospector):
Charlie…Charlie, this is Jim…Jim Benton…
CHARLIE (delirious): Howdy, Jim…I…I
found it…
JIM: Found what, Charlie?
SMOKEY: He’s been ravin’ like that
all the way in here! He keeps sayin’
somethin’ about findin’ a Lost Aztec Mine!
CHARLIE: I found it, Jim…I found
the Lost Aztec Mine…Jim…Jim…it’s yours, Jim…
JIM: Take it easy, pardner…
CHARLIE: I got proof…
Charlie reaches into his crusty clothing and pulls out several
nuggets and a weather-beaten piece of paper.
It lands on the floor of the saloon, and Kirby—who by this time has
returned with Davis and Gibson to see what the hubbub was about—makes a grab
for it…but
Tex steps on it
quickly. The rest of the men observe as
Charlie, mad with the heat, makes the most of his solo chapter appearance (the
guy’s in one chapter and yet he gets a mention in the credits for the rest of
the serial?
That is an agent, my friends.). Charlie continues to babble about the mine, explaining
that it belongs to Jim (since
Benton
grubstaked him) and a woman named “Mary.”
Then he goes off to that big watering hole in the sky.
Kirby and Davis return to the dank, fetid backroom that is
the base of their foul, evil operations.
DAVIS: Do you really
think he found the Lost Aztec?
KIRBY: From the looks of those
nuggets he certainly found something…and
he laid it right in Benton’s lap!
DAVIS: That’s another
reason for getting Benton out of the way! But
how?
KIRBY (after a pause): When the Wolf
gets in from that stage holdup at Dry Wells…I’ll have him and his men take care of Benton…and his whole
outfit!
DAVIS: That’s it!
Back at the bar, Tex
remembers that he stuffed Charlie’s map to the mine in his vest and he hands it
to Jim.
BORAX: He said the mine was yours…yours and Mary’s…
JIM: Yeah…I wonder who this Mary
is?
BORAX: Maybe it’s his burro…
PANCHO: (intelligible Spanish
phrase)
TEX: You mean to say all the time you and him was out
prospectin’ that he didn’t say nothin’ about his kinfolk?
JIM: No, Tex…ol’
Chuck was pretty closemouthed about
his personal affairs…
“Also his personal hygiene.
But I digress.”
PANCHO: Say…maybe this Mary is ol’
Chuck’s sweetheart…gonna ask Tombstone when he come…he know Chuck a long time before you do, did he?
JIM: That’s right, Pancho…he might
know who she is…
BORAX: Yeah—we’ll ask him when he
comes in from Berdoo…
And as if it were scripted, the scene shifts to a rider on a
white horse, galloping through the hills.
(I’m going to spare you the Silver jokes—because the horse is, in fact,
called by that very name…Buck Jones was riding Silver long before the Lone
Ranger saddled up.) There is a brief
return to the saloon, where Jim remarks: “You fellas stay here and wait for
him…I’m going over to the bank and see Lafe Hogan.”
We iris in on a Berdoo stagecoach as the strains of
Fingal’s Cave are struck up
again. The rider on the white horse
watches from a distance…
That rider is
Tombstone—the
last major character of our dramatis personae, played by legendary silver
screen cowboy Buck Jones. In the 1920s
and 1930s, Jones was one of the popular stars in the movies…but by the time of
Riders of Death Valley, his fame had
waned a bit. It would soon be
resurrected at Monogram, where Jones started to appear in a series of movies
known as The Rough Riders with fellow legends Tim McCoy and Raymond
Hatten. The series was quite popular…but
Jones died from injuries sustained from the infamous Cocoanut Grove fire in
Boston,
Massachusetts in 1942. Interestingly, Jones probably had more starring
serial experience than the other stars in
Death
Valley; he had headlined five cliffhangers before this one (he’s billed
third in
Riders—behind comic relief
Leo Carrillo, of all the indignities):
Gordon
of Ghost City (1933),
The Red Rider
(1934),
The Roaring West (1935),
The Phantom Rider (1936) and
White Eagle (1941—the only chapter play
he made at Columbia).
Before we continue on—in case you were asking yourselves
“Might this have been called ‘the million dollar serial’ because of the money used
to pay the salaries?” the answer would be no.
Actually, the situation in having all these top celebs in this serial
was really a fortuitous one—a rare example of everyone being available to work
at the same time.
Back to the action:
Tombstone
tells his horse Silver “Here’s where we cheat a little bit…better go into your
act, Silver.” He flags down the
stagecoach and asks the driver (Bud Osborne) if he can get a lift to town
because “Silver’s a little lame.”
Tombstone
climbs into the coach and seats himself next to this young lovely.
Billed here as Jeanne Kelly, the lovely actress had already
appeared in two Universal serials—
Junior
G-Men (1940) and
The Green Hornet
Strikes Again! (1941)—but is probably better known to classic movie fans as
Jean Brooks…she would later go over to R-K-O and make programmers like
The Falcon in Danger (1943) and
The Falcon and the Co-Eds (1943). She’s best known for her work in several Val
Lewton movies—chiefly as the doomed Jacqueline Gibson in the blog’s favorite
Lewton film,
The Seventh Victim
(1943).
I don’t recognize the two gentlemen riding with Jeanne—whose
character goes by “Mary Morgan” (not the burro)—but seeing as how they’re not
long for this world I won’t take the time to research them. Mary comments on the various sights and
sounds as the stage makes it way to Panamint—and upon seeing some wild
stallions in the hills she remarks that “Uncle Charlie never wrote me about any
wild horses.”
FIRST PASSENGER: Chuckawalla never
paid any attention to wild horses…he
spent all his time looking for the Lost Aztec Mine…
SECOND PASSENGER: I wish I had all
the money Jim Benton spent grubstaking that old desert rat…
MARY: Jim Benton? Uncle
Charlie never wrote about him…
FIRST PASSENGER: He didn’t? Why everybody in Death Valley
knows Jim Benton!
SECOND PASSENGER: Why, if it wasn’t
for Jim and his riders this country wouldn’t be a safe place to live in!
Go Team Jim!
FIRST PASSENGER: Yeah…and I’d feel
a whole lot safer right now…if he were along to protect this $50,000 we’re carrying…
During this conversation, Tombstone
keeps sneaking looks at his comely female passenger…who turns in his direction
just as he turns away himself. An
amusing moment—and then there’s a scene shift to the Panamint City Bank, where
president Lafe Hogan expresses his concerns to the heroic Jim.
HOGAN: I’ve got a shipment of money
comin’ in on the Berdoo stage…if it doesn’t get here by noon, I’m gonna lose my bank!
JIM: How’s that?
HOGAN: Well, I borrowed the money
from Kirby and Davis…
JIM: You got nothing to worry
about…the stage will get here all right…
HOGAN: Yeah, I know…but while I was
looking for you I heard that Wolf and his gang were headed for the stagecoach
trail near Death Valley Junction!
JIM: Say…that doesn’t sound so good…
Ya think, Jimbo?
Well, he may not be the smartest hero in serial history but he tells
Hogan he’s going to round up the boys and see what’s up. There is an establishing shot of Jim and his
riders mounting up, and then we come to one of the funnier continuity errors of
the production: The Case of the Missing Horse!
You can see in the above screen cap
Tombstone’s
horse is tied to the back of the stagecoach.
There is a quick cut to the interior of the stage, and then another shot
shows…
…vee-ola! The horse
has vanished! That horse appears and
reappears constantly in this upcoming chase footage…but instead of obsessing
about that, let’s introduce our last big star as he comments to Wolf Reade upon
spotting the stage: “Here she comes, boss…”
Yes, Lon Chaney, Jr. was a movie or two away from his
breakout role in
The Wolf Man
(1941)…even though he had made some favorable critical noise in 1939’s
Of Mice and Men. Lon turns up in quite a few serials:
The Last Frontier (1932—R-K-O’s only
chapter play),
Ace Drummond (1936—as
a henchman named “Ivan”),
Undersea Kingdom
(1936), etc. He’s pretty hooty as a goon
in
Secret Agent X-9 (1937), but his
best chapter play is one that followed
Riders
entitled
Overland Mail (1942), which
allows him to be the good guy (!) and also features Don Winslow himself, Don
Terry (Noah Beery, Jr. is in that one, too).
“All right, men,” snarls Wolf. “I want a quick job…no witnesses.” Sounds as if he’s going to ignore that “no
unnecessary killings” proviso, too. Wolf
and his raiders go riding after the stagecoach…which at that point was kind of
poking along until the first passenger shouts out “Look out—a hold-up!” The stage then lurches into gear, and there
is much gunplay from Tombstone and
the other two male passengers, directed at Wolf and his bandits. (Chivalrously, Tombstone
pushes Mary to the floor of the stagecoach.)
The first passenger is shot in the arm…but for some reason
falls over dead. (Walk it off, you
crybaby…) The shotgun rider is soon
picked off by Reade’s desperadoes…but help is on the way as Jim and the Riders
appear from over a nearby ridge.
Then the stagecoach driver is whacked. Wolf catches up to the stagecoach and climbs
aboard, grabbing the reins to control the horses. Somehow, Jim comes out of nowhere and manages
to climb aboard the coach, too (Wolf’s gang was riding right behind him, so how
Jim avoided being shot I’ll leave to your imagination). The two men then scuffle on top of the stage,
with Wolf being knocked to the ground.
Jim grabs the reins and struggles to control the now
heckbent-for-leather running horses. As
Tombstone
and Mary are seen climbing out of the stagecoach in mid-gallop, the stagecoach
does this little number over a cliff…
