A missing Jack Elam film credit.
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Jack Elam
horn-5 — 21 years ago(November 09, 2004 04:23 PM)
And the reason it is missing is because the IMDb does not list this film on site. I've submitted it and sooner or later it will appear but until then for Jack Elam fans, here it is:
Mystery Range (1947)
Dorado Productions Incorporated
55 Minutes
Producers: Bartlett Carre and Ande Lamb
Director: Ande Lamb
Story: "The Judge Had an Alibi" by Ande Lamb
Screenplay: Ande Lamb
Camera: Gilbert Warrenton
Editor: George McGuire
Music Director: Rudy deSaxe
Production Supervisor: Bartlett Carre
Assistant Director: George Tobin
Sound: Peter Gioga & Don Harrod
Cast:
Lee "Lasses" White (Judge "Lasses" White), Don Haggerty (Deputy Tom Emery), "Texas" Jim Lewis (Tex Lambert), Ruth Whitley (Laura Lambert), Jack Elam (Burvel Lambert), Forrest Taylor (Paul Seward), Frank Austin (Preston "Pres" Lambert), Dutch Schlickenmayer (Jim Lambert), Ed Ray (Sheriff Henry Wig), Ronald Marriott (Noah Miller), Pat Henry (Jeff Preston), Clayde Jackman (Steve Babcock), and there are no unmcredited players because the above are the sum total of faces on the screen
Songs are "Get Up Pete" written and "performed" by Lee "Lasses" White;"Hootin' Nannie Annie " by Texas Jim Lewis; and "The Laughing Song" by Ed Ray.
Story has White and deputy Haggerty riding into town to try Jim Lambert for the murder of his brother Seth. Seth left three sons, Frank Austin (in about his 75th year of appearing in films, so Seth would have soon died of old age based on the age of Frank Austin), band-leader "Texas" Jim Lewis and Jack Elam was the imbecile son. All three sons are highly vexed at Uncle Jim for killing their father, but the Elam character is smart enough to note that his cousin Laura is the only female in the cast, and he holds no grudges against her even if her daddy did kill his daddy. The witness against Jim is Forrest Taylor and his two henchman, and one has to be brain dead not to know they are the real culprits. This would be one of those dreaded five-star, bell-ringing Spoilers the users of the IMDb dread like a plague, but I refer back up the page to "brain dead."
The music on the sound-track is provided by Lewis' Lone Star Cowboys Band, but they are not shown, so the Lambert Boys are seen on screen as musicians, and Elam does a mean turn on the steel guitar on one song courtesy of pre-recorded music. Jack also plays the idiot over-the-top most of the time but, to his credit, he does not do an Emmett Lynn imitation with his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.
I got the tape from a friend who has a 16mm print, but he is not interested in making and selling tapes of the film, Surely, Greg Luce at Sinister Cinema or some other tape/DVD supplier has this in their closet somewhere.
Anyway, thought you Elam fans would like to know about this film. The date on it should appear soon on site, and then I'll add some Comment notes there reference where, when and why it was made, and also why it is so obscure. The primary reason for the obscurity is because to ranks easily among the worse-ten B-westerns ever made. And top two-or-three as the dullest.
Les Adams -
jholmstrom-1 — 20 years ago(April 04, 2006 06:36 AM)
This is off-topic, but I have a favor to ask. Anyhow I've spent a long time searching for a film that scared me to death when I was a little kid. I can't remember it's name, the year it was released or who was in it, but it was a low-budget western that featured a plot that involved a likable old man character from a stagecoach or wagon train getting captured by Injuns and having his eyes burned out. Then later he rejoins the settlers and there are several sequences of him with his eyes burnt out, fighting off those evil Indians. Anyhow, these images haunted me for many years afterwards.
Since you two seem to know a lot about western films I was hoping you might know something about this. Maybe there were a lot of low-budget western short subjects that haven't been listed on IMDB yet?
I think it played before "Peter Pan" or some other Disney cartoona weird pairing, but this was the 1950s. (BTW, I visited the Jack Elam page to find out when and where he played "Toothy Thompson," a character I loved as a kidthought he appeared on "The Virginian" TV show but guess I was wrong since Jack Elam doesn't even appear in the cast list for the show, and the character was on "Sugarfoot").