Tag: western

Terror on the Prairie

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★★★
“Prairie dog pest control.”

I keep hoping Carano will deliver an action film reaching the quality of her debut, Haywire. Results since then have been… well, let’s be charitable and call them uneven. The reasons for her departure from “traditional” Hollywood aren’t something I want to get into: but this, produced by conservative outlet The Daily Wire, does show the book isn’t closed on her yet. The Wire have put out a few films we’ve covered here, though again, the quality has been mixed: the last, Shut In, was not good. This is a similarly simple story, yet does a bit more with it. The pacing is too languid for my tastes, yet there were sufficient quirks to keep me adequately interested.

It takes place on the Montana plains, some years after the end of the Civil War, where Hattie McAllister (Carano) and her husband, Jeb (Cerrone), are trying to make a life for themselves and their two kids. Hattie has just about had enough, and wants to head back to her home-town of St. Louis. Before any decision can be made, life is interrupted by the arrival of a former Confederate officer, the Captain (Searcy), and his band of men. While he initially seems charming, the scalps tied to his saddle tell another story, and it’s quickly clear he has a specific agenda, rather than randomly passing through. With Jeb away in town, it’s up to Hattie to fend off the ensuing siege until her husband can return. Considering she is depicted as unable to kill a rattlesnake that entered their cabin, she’s going to need new-found resilience.

It’s a straightforward tale, brought down by too many unnecessary pauses: we really do not care what Jen is getting up to, for example. These derail the film’s reasonable efforts to build tension, bolstered by some surprisingly graphic gore (one throat-slitting in particular), and Searcy’s good performance as a thoroughly villainous antagonist, whose word can’t be trusted, despite his quoting of scripture. It might have made more sense to have Hattie depicted as competent and brave from the get-go. Instead, it leaves the Captain and his men seeming incompetent, although some of this is their initial reluctance to take her seriously, e.g. he addresses her 9-year-old son as the “man of the house.” 

A novel wrinkle is the director’s decision not to accompany the action with a musical score of any kind. It certainly keeps you in the moment, yet there is also reason why Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack is so key to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns being undisputed classics. The action, if generally restrained, is competent, and it’s probably for the best the film did not try to turn Hattie into some kind of Western MMA goddess. I did worry the return of Jeb was going to push his spouse off to the sidelines in the final reel; while it teetered on the edge for a while, the film pulled back. If not breaking any boundaries, this is worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of the genre.

Dir: Michael Polish
Star: Gina Carano, Nick Searcy, Donald Cerrone. Tyler Fischer

Claiming Her Legacy, by Linda Goodnight

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

Evangelical Christian author Linda Goodnight is not new to the writing craft; she’s an established novelist with 160 distinct works to her credit, at least some of them best sellers. This particular novel was newly published early this year.

Our setting here is Oklahoma Territory in 1890. (At that time, the latter territory occupied the western part of the present-day state; the eastern part was the even more scantily-settled and lawless Indian Territory.) The author lives in Oklahoma (so writes about the setting with assurance); according to an online interview with her, this book was inspired by a photograph in the Territorial Museum at Guthrie, showing a lone pioneer woman toting a rifle in front of a tent as she stood guard over her claim in the 1889 Land Rush. Her spirit imbues Willa Malone, our heroine here.

30 years old, Willa sees herself as an “old maid.” She’s the eldest of three half-sisters, daughters of peripatetic ne’er-do-well Finn Malone, who outlived two wives (and was deserted by a third) in the course of his wanderings, which in 1889 led him to a homestead in the small community of Sweet Clover. Like many of the townsfolk, he was heavily in debt to conniving banker Theodore Pierce, and used his land as collateral. But he’s now recently dead, murdered after he took off on his latest quest for gold. At the moment, the farm isn’t productive; without him, the sisters won’t be able to repay the loan, and they’ll lose their home within months.

His killer, though, has been identified as notorious outlaw Charlie Bangs, rumored to be hiding out in Indian Territory, and there’s a $1,000.00 price on his head. When Willa, early on, conceives the idea of tracking him down and claiming the bounty, nobody can talk her out of it. The idea’s not as hare-brained as some folks think. Tough and practical, “tomboy” Willa’s a good shot with a rifle whose hunting skills keep her family supplied with meat; she can ride, and she’s got guts. As even she recognizes, though, the enterprise she’s contemplating is a deadly dangerous one. At the very least, she’ll need the services of an experienced trail guide. Enter one Gideon Hartley.

Gideon’s about 35; he’s fairly new in town, but the reputation that precedes him confirms that he’s highly competent as a trail guide in rough terrain –when he’s sober. But his reputation also suggests (correctly) that he drinks a lot. In fact, his alcohol abuse problem is longstanding and deep-seated. He and Willa meet in Chapter 1. Surprisingly (or maybe not, depending on how familiar readers are with “romance” genre conventions; this was published under the “Love Inspired” imprint, though I approached it as a Western, and it works on those terms) there’s some chemistry between them; but neither is looking for that sort of thing, nor inclined to nurture it. More to the point, Willa’s not thrilled with the idea of a “drunk” for a guide; and Gideon (who hasn’t done any guiding for about a year) is pretty well convinced that he’s not up to the job and that Willa would be embarking on a suicide mission anyway. But before long, it becomes clear to her that he’s the only prospective guide she’s going to get, and to him that she’s going whether he goes with her or not.

Goodnight gives serious attention to developing her characters (including the secondary ones, along with our H/h) and bringing the community to life, and she takes the time needed to do that in depth. We don’t get started on our actual quest until a bit more than 200 pages in (and the book has 363 pages). Some readers, who expect the adventure of the trail to be the main warp and woof of the tale, won’t like this aspect. However, I fully appreciated the textured, in-depth approach. Both main characters (who alternate as viewpoint characters, though third-person narration is used throughout) are fully round and three-dimensional. Gideon in particular has a lot of psychological baggage, which is believable, and gradually disclosed.

Western-style action, once it kicks in, isn’t stinted; there are plenty of jeopardies on the trail, and the climactic confrontation will test our leading couple’s mettle on more than one level. (Willa doesn’t actually have to fire her rifle, but she displays her action heroine moxie by handling a very physically challenging situation near the end with flying colors; I doubt if I’d been brave enough to do the things she did!) The author writes very well; her plotting is excellent, and her re-creation of the time and place masterful. (It features a cameo appearance by real-life person Bass Reeves, the first African-American deputy U.S. marshall.)

In keeping with the standards of the ECPA, this book poses no content issues for bad language, sexual content (we do have reference to prostitution, and to the ugly trade of sex trafficking, which is a very contemporary reality, but which goes back a lot longer than that), or ultra-gory violence. Christian faith (which both main characters were raised with, though Gideon’s faith has been long neglected) plays a positive role here, though the book isn’t “preachy” and delivers its spiritual messages by example.

I’d recommend this to fans of Westerns, Western romance, and clean (especially Christian) romance in general, as well as to fans of strong heroines. The story arc here is complete, and the book isn’t said to be part of a series (though I suspect that both of Willa’s sisters might eventually get her own sequel). Although some characters, such as Belle Holbrook, obviously have very intriguing backstories, I couldn’t find any indication that they were in prior books by the author. (But if they were, or if they eventually get prequels, I’d be interested in reading those books!)

Author: Linda Goodnight
Publisher: Love Inspired; available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Badland Doves

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★★
“When doves cry.”

I am contractually obliged to appreciate at least somewhat, any film made here in Arizona. This certainly fits the bill, having been shot at places like the Pioneer Living History Museum, Sitgreaves National Forest and Winters Film Group Studio. However, it is a fairly basic tale of two-pronged revenge, with significant pacing issues. The proceedings only come to life in the last 20 minutes – and barely that. Initially, matters are more than a tad confusing, as we jump about in time and space without apparent notification. But the basic principal is eventually established.

Revenger #1 is Regina Silva (Martin), whose family were killed by masked intruders. Following that, she got shooting lessons from a conveniently passing gunslinger, and set out to find those responsible, working as a saloon prostitute because it was apparently the best way to find them. Yeah. About that… Anyway, Revenger #2 is Victoria Bonham (Penny), who just so happens to be the madam of a brothel, also seeking justice after one of her girls was murdered. Coincidentally, Regina shows up, and they eventually discover they are both looking for the same person, Pete Chalmers (Johnston). However, his father (Greenfield) wields so much power in the town, his son is basically untouchable. Victoria wants to leverage legal means against Pete, while Regina prefers more direct action, and isn’t willing to wait around forever, while the wheels of the law grind slowly away.

If you were to summarize my reactions to this, the first ten minutes would be “What is going on?”. The next twenty would likely be, “Ah, ok. I know where this is heading.” After that, we get about half an hour of, “Is anything else of significance going to happen?”, then twenty of moderate satisfaction, as Chalmers and his forces go to battle with Regina and her allies. However, the action here is underwhelming, not least because it appears the bad guys have all the shooting skills of Star Wars stormtroopers, unable to hit stationary targets from about ten paces, in broad daylight (as shown, top). Pete is an underwhelming villain too: beyond “alcohol’s to blame,” it’s never particularly established why he attacked Regina’s family or killed Victoria’s employee. Motivation: it’s vastly over-rated, apparently.

The last five minutes do offer at least something unexpected, in terms of the mechanism by which revenge is achieved. It’s about the only novel angle the film has to offer, and you sense this is one of those cases where having the same person writing, editing and directing proved problematic. I’m not convinced the story can handle the two-pronged approach, with the script leaving both threads feeling in need of development.The dual female leads aren’t bad, though I was distracted by Penny’s accent, which sounds more Antipodean than Arizona. To be fair, it’s really not any worse than Bad Girls, the far larger budgeted “whores out for revenge” film. However, that is not exactly a high bar to clear. For passion projects like this, I have no problem forgiving budgetary restrictions, and to be fair, this looks and sounds decent. The plodding and meandering script, however, is much harder to see past.

Dir: Paul Winters
Star: Sandy Penny, Jessica Y. Martin, Manny Greenfield, Daniel Johnston
A version of this review originally appeared on my other review site, Film Blitz.

The Woman Who Robbed the Stagecoach

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★★½
“A tale of daylight robbery.”

There are a couple of points to note going in. This was one of “12 Westerns in 12 months”, a project run by the director during 2020. It also proudly pronounces itself as the first ever Western feature to be shot entirely on an iPhone. Both of these do lead to limitations. The sheer speed involved obvious has an impact, and I can’t help wondering if a more measured approach would have been better for the end product. As for the iPhone… Well, on the plus side it looked perfectly watchable on my 49″ television, especially the outdoor scenes. However, the indoor sequences seemed almost too crisp. Especially for a historical production like this, I felt I was expecting a softer look, and I found that a bit of a distraction throughout.

It’s the story of Pearl Hart, a genuine figure from Arizona history, who achieved notoriety by being involved in one of the last stagecoach robberies, at the very end of the nineteenth century (May 30, 1899, to be precise). The movie covers both her life leading up to that point, and the subsequent arrest, trial, acquittal, re-arrest, conviction, escape, recapture, eventual release – according to some, because she managed to get pregnant in jail – and final disappearance into obscurity. Actually, the script basically feels like they took Pearl’s Wikipedia page, and used that as a synopsis. You can virtually tick off the incidents mentioned in it, as they happen during the film. With the character such a blank slate, and so little verifiable information, I’d like to have seen Mills give us something not taken from the first page of Google results.

The positives are mostly from the performances. Mills pulls double-duty as Hart’s accomplice, “Joe Boot”, about whom next to nothing is known. That does allow some freedom, and Root is made into a European miner, who is largely obsessed with Pearl and prepared to take the fall for the robbery on her behalf. I did like Etchell’s portrayal of Pearl, a woman who has been fighting an uphill battle almost her entire life, and tries to make the best of her situation – often by morally questionable means, albeit out of necessity. The film also shot in a lot of the locations around where events took place, such as in Globe, with the Yuma Territorial Prison standing in for Tucson’s jail.

It’s unfortunate that the limited time and budget are often all too apparent. In particular, there’s next to no scope here, with Mills largely forced to keep the camera in close, to try and disguise the paucity of sets, or things like a lack of extras. It really doesn’t work, although it remains a story that should be told, and I’m glad to have heard it. But the almost throwaway nature of the production, combined with the rote nature of the script, does the larger than life character of Pearl Hart a disservice. They should have chosen to print the legend instead.

Dir: Travis Mills
Star: Lorraine Etchell, Travis Mills, Kevin Goss, Michael Estridge

Avenging Angels: The Wine of Violence, by A.W. Hart

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

Like “Franklin W. Dixon” and “Carolyn Keene,” “A. W. Hart” is the house pen name assigned by the publisher to all the various authors of individual books in the series of which this novel is the seventh installment. In this case, though, A. W. is actually my Goodreads friend Charles Gramlich (that’s no secret; he’s credited in the “About the Author” note at the book’s end). Although I’d read and liked a couple of his short e-stories previously, I’d never tried any of his long fiction. So, when I saw this novel mentioned in one of his blog posts last year, I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. (Barb and I read it together, since she’s an avid Western fan, and I knew this would be right up her alley.)

In choosing to read this installment by itself, I guessed correctly that it can be treated as a standalone. The series premise is explained in passing near the beginning, without needing any burdensome long exposition. Just after the end of the Civil War, then 16-year-old twins George Washington (nicknamed “Reno”) and Sara Bass were orphaned when a band of renegade ex-Confederate soldiers raided the family’s Kansas farm and brutally slaughtered their parents and siblings. The twins’ father, a Lutheran pastor as well as a homesteader, had brought the two up as Christians familiar with the Bible, and also trained them both to handle firearms very capably. He lived long enough after the attack to charge his two surviving kids (they’d been out on the prairie when the raiders struck) to avenge the outrage, and to rid the world of murdering evildoers. After serving justice on their family’s killers in the series opener, they went on to become successful bounty hunters, despite their youth, with their ensuing adventures in the subsequent books each apparently episodic and self-contained (so the series doesn’t have to be read in order).

We’re not given an exact date for the events of this installment, but I’d guess it to be roughly 1867, and the twins’ age by now to be about 18. Our setting here is western Missouri and the Arkansas Ozarks, a region genre fans might not associate with Westerns; but in fact, in real life, this area was as much a frontier as the contiguous Kansas and Indian Territory countryside, there was a lot of movement and economic interchange across the state lines, and lifestyles and attitudes didn’t differ much on either the western or eastern sides. The tale begins in medias res, with our Avenging Angels stealthily closing in on the camp of a band of train robbers. Early on, one of these outlaws will drop the name of Rev. Eli Cable. He’s an apparently mesmerizing and charismatic preacher who’s building his own settlement, New Kingdom, in the Ozarks –and who may or may not be the mastermind behind this train robbery. It’s up to our hero/heroine to find out the truth about that; and naturally, it won’t be a simple matter of just riding up to his door and asking him.

This is a well-plotted, ably written novel, with a fast pace and a lot of action. (There’s no “pornography of violence,” but the body count is high, and gun/knife fight scenes, etc. are described simply and straightforwardly.) Some factors give the book a bit more depth than run-of-the-mill Westerns. Eli Cable is a highly complex character; the author looks realistically at the hatreds and grievances left on both sides in the aftermath of America’s bloodiest war, in an area where the fighting was often up-close and personal guerilla war, without justifying hatred or demonizing all ex-Confederates; and the faith of some of the main characters gives a spiritual dimension to the story. (Gramlich himself isn’t necessarily a Christian now, but he was raised as a Roman Catholic and treats faith sympathetically; the book, and evidently the series as a whole, is Christian-friendly.) What we would today call post-traumatic stress disorder also gets some scrutiny. Besides the Western elements, elements of the mystery genre are also deftly incorporated. Bad language is very minimal; and though there’s mention of rape and prostitution, there’s no sex as such. (Reno’s faithfully given his heart to a young lady back home in Kansas.)

My impression of series written by multiple authors is that the main characters can tend to be drawn quite blandly, with a minimal profile that’s not expanded on, so as not to confuse new-to-the-series writers. (After well over 100 books, for instance, all we really know about the Hardy boys is that Frank’s blonde and Joe’s dark-haired. :-) ) Here, though, both the Bass siblings come across as three-dimensional characters whom we do get to know as persons, not as stock roles; and while they’re twins, they’re not clones of each other. In this particular episode, the demands of the plot give Reno more “screen time” in the middle chapters that make up the longest part of the book; he’d have to be described as the main character. But Sara’s role isn’t negligible; she’s a full (and lethal) participant in the many fight scenes, recognized by Reno as smarter and deadlier than he is, and I’d also judge her to be faster and more adept with a pistol than he is (though she admits he’s better at handling a long gun). Both are likable, but she comes across as the more reserved of the two, and also as the one who still has the most anger over the tragic fate of their family.

This would be a quick read if you had a normal amount of time for reading (with our “car books,” of course, Barb and I don’t, hence the long time it took us!), and I think most genre fans would find it enough of a page-turner to make their reading sessions as long as possible. I’m not looking to get drawn into another long series right now, and investigated this volume only because I know the author (electronically); but it made enough of a favorable impression that, if I had handy access to other books in the series, I’d definitely check them out too!

Author: A.W. Hart
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
7 of 12 in the Avenging Angels series.

Cowgirls vs. Pterodactyls

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★★½
“Where the deer and the pterodactyls play.”

A title like this is inevitably going to come with all manner of expectations, and these will largely be things that any film is ill-equipped to fulfill. That’s all the more the case, when your movie is clearly a super low-budget endeavour. By most objective standards, this could be seen as terrible, and I wouldn’t argue with you. But for all the flaws, and enthusiasm that exceeds technical ability, this is made with clear affection for its elements. That goes quite some way in mind to excusing the problems. In particular, there’s a love for the world of stop-motion dinosaurs, which I share. For example, the narrator is Martine Beswick, who co-starred in the classic stop-motion dino epic, One Million Years B.C. I presume Raquel Welch was unavailable…

Truth be told though, there’s only one “actual” cowgirl here. That’s Bunny Parker (Vienhage), who is hired by schoolmistress Rebecca Crawford (Wiley), after her husband is snatched and taken away by a pterodactyl. No-one believes her, flying reptiles not exactly being native to to the wild West, which is why she turns to Parker for a search and rescue mission. Also along for the ride is saloon madam Debbie Dukes Riley Masterson III (Vega), who has come into possession of a satchel of pterodactyl eggs, which may help explain the creature’s aggressiveness. After a long trek through the wilderness, they reach the cave complex where the beasts make their home. Let battle – involving guns and a convenient, large box of dynamite – commence!

I did enjoy the stop-motion work by Ryan Lengyel. Even if it’s not up to the standards of Ray Harryhausen, to put it mildly, the work involved is still apparent, and his models’ interactions with the human cast were particularly well done. Kennedy matches this footage with larger models and puppets, and the results were worthy of praise, given the clearly limited resources. That said, other aspects are embarrassingly sloppy. Would it have killed one actress to have removed her glaringly anachronistic nose-ring? Some of the guns, too, look like they came out of a Christmas cracker. Period pieces like this are particularly unsuited to low-budget work, and it seems fair to suggest that Kennedy bit off more than he could chew.

However, he wisely keeps things moving, and at 71 minutes, this isn’t likely to outstay its welcome. Well, providing you do have the necessary tolerance for movies where imagination greatly outstrips the budget. The three leads all go at their roles similarly i.e. perhaps with more enthusiasm than talent, though it’s an approach appropriate to the overall attitude. Less successful is import scream queen Thompson, whose character Doris Yates seems to serve little real purpose. She may well have emailed her scenes in. I went into this thinking, “It’s probably going to suck, but I hope it does so in a reasonably entertaining way.” Overall, I’d say that nailed it, with just about enough moments where we were laughing with the film, rather than mocking it.

Dir: Joshua Kennedy
Star: Madelyn Wiley, Haley Zega, Carmen Vienhage, Dani Thompson

Misfit Lil Rides In + Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope, by Chap O’Keefe

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Misfit Lil Rides In: Literary rating: ★★★, Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆
Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope: Literary rating: ★★★★, Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

The Western is typically among the most macho of genres, and this applies to the world of pulp fiction as much as to movies. There are exceptions: Werner has covered quite a few in the past, such as The Complete Adventures of Senorita Scorpion, and I recently dipped my toe in the genre, with the first book of Chrissy Wissler’s Cowboy Cat series, Women’s Justice. While set in the past, that did have a contemporary feel to it: Cat felt like a 21st-century heroine in an antiquated world. That seems significantly less the case for Miss Lilian Goodnight, despite her nickname of “Misfit Lil”. These two stories feel like a throwback to the golden age of pulp. There is no obvious agenda beyond entertaining the reader, which is almost refreshing. They’re quick, uncomplex, and occasionally slightly disreputable reads. Nothing wrong with these elements, I should stress.

Lil is the daughter of cattle rancher Ben Goodnight, who has resisted all attempts by her father, a widower, to turn her into a proper young lady. In particular, he sent her to a Boston boarding school; rather than uplifting Lillian, she succeeded in corrupting the other pupils, and we sent home in disgrace, earning her nickname. Since then, she has been riding free, helping out on the ranch, with occasional stunts that bring her into conflict with the local authority, such as showing off her pistol marksmanship on the local Main Street. “Once she hammered five four-inch nails halfways into a boardwalk post, then drove each of ’em in with a bullet from twenty paces.” The local sheriff was unimpressed, locking her up overnight, until her long-suffering father bailed her out. But Lil gained another nickname: “Princess o’ Pistoleers”.

Beyond the heroine, the players do overlap, in particular, a co-lead in both books is Jackson Farraday, local scout and guide, who takes on commissions both for the army and for civilians seeking to cross the dangerous territory. She has a crush on him, though acknowledges its futility, with him being twice her age (doing the math based off this and other information, it makes Lil about twenty, and Jackson almost forty), and he similarly has no interest in her for romantic purposes. But he certainly respects her skills and bravery, and they have no hesitation in helping each other out when needed. Which is the case in both of these novels, with Farraday being falsely accused of murder in each.

The first, Misfit Lil Rides In, sees him framed for killing the wife of store owner Axel Boorman. While Axel was actually the killer, in a fit of jealous rage, with the help of the local law, Farraday is blamed, and a posse sent after him. With Lil’s aid, the posse is fended off, though she is arrested, and Jackson believed to have fallen to his doom. He is actually still alive, but ends up captured by the local Apaches, so both are in serious trouble. Even after Jackson escapes, he falls foul of an Army officer with a grudge against him, and ends up behind bars too. Lil needs to free herself, break her friend out, then find some way of proving the truth – not least about Boorman’s scheme to sell guns to the Indians – and convince the authorities to take action.

I think my major surprise was how relatively even it felt like the book was split between Jackson and Lil. While Jackson isn’t a bad character, he is fairly generic as Western heroes go. I was considerably more interested in Lil, and every page that detailed her colleague’s adventures felt like it was wasted, especially as the whole book is under two hundred pages. I almost found myself speed-reading the Faraday heavy sections, to get back to what Lil was doing. Outside of the gun-battle against the posse, that was largely using her brain rather than her pistols. But of particular note here is an author’s afterword, Heroines of the Wilder West, in which O’Keefe discusses some of Lil’s predecessors and inspirations, such as Hurricane Nell and Denver Doll. I sense a rabbit-hole for future exploration, and may have to watch Along Came Jones as well, for its proto-heroine.

However, any issues are well addressed in Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope; it seems O’Keefe has grown more comfortable with his characters by this, the most recent entry. While Faraday plays a significant role here, Lil feels more the focus, and the story flows around her in a fluid way. It begins when Lil helps rescue a wagon train of settlers headed west, who make an ill-informed decision to try and cross the mountains as the weather comes down. She gets Jackson a job as co-guide on the train, but the previous sole guide, Luke Reiner, is far from happy about it. When the corpse of a young, female settler turns up drowned in a creek, suspicion falls on Farraday, because Lil isn’t the only woman to find him attractive. It’s up to her to find the necessary proof that will exonerate her friend, before Reiner succeeds in whipping up a lynch mob.

There’s a good sense of escalation here, and it’s a solid page-turner, with each incident providing a natural progression into the next. It works both as a Western and as a whodunnit mystery, with the killer’s identity shrouded in uncertainty. As for the cause of death… Well, that might be one of those “slightly disreputable” elements mentioned earlier, even if there are worse ways to go, it has to be said! Again though, Lil seems to be almost loathe to use her shooting skills. To me, the point of guns is that they are a great equalizer, allowing the weak (or “weaker sex,” to use a slightly pejorative term!) to stand up against the strong. But over both volumes, I’m not sure there was any real demonstration of the sure-shot abilities described early in the first book.

This is a relatively minor complaint, however. These may be stories, rather than Great Literature; yet there’s an absolute lack of apparent pretension to the approach, which I appreciated. If the intention of the author was, as discussed above, simply to provide a good yarn that entertains the reader, I’d say they accomplish that mission. 

Author: Chap O’Keefe
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Books 1 and 7 in the Misfit Lil series.
I was provided copies of both volumes, in exchange for an honest review.

Jessi’s Girls

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★★★★
“And not a Rick Springfield in sight.”

It’s about the year 1880, and Jessica Hartwell (Currie) is heading out West in a wagon with her preacher husband. They encounter the gang of Frank Brock (Frank); they repeatedly rape Jessica, before shooting her husband fatally, and leaving her for dead. She survives, returning to health with the help of prospector Rufe, who sports an unfortunate, obviously fake beard, yet also teaches the young woman how to shoot. For Jessi has vengeance on her mind, and to assist her in this path, she liberates three other women from the custody of Sheriff Clay (Lund). There’s outlaw Rachel (Jennifer Bishop); saloon girl Claire (Regina Carrol); and Indian Kana (the not-exactly Indian Stern), who had been a part of Frank’s gang until he abandoned her.

While director Adamson was best known for his horror films, some of his work has been covered here before: The Female Bunch and I Spit on Your Corpse! This is his best entry yet, which is straightforward, short on pretension and all the better for it. It certainly doesn’t hang around; we’re barely a few minutes in before the reason for revenge is under way, and it’s not easy viewing. It sits particularly uncomfortably, since just a few minutes earlier, the audience was enjoying the sight of the lead actress (also seen in Mama’s Dirty Girls) skinny-dipping. For the film doesn’t forget the sex in exploitation. Jessi is surprisingly quick to forget her late husband and bed the Sheriff, with most of the other female cast similarly disrobing at some point.

On the other hand, there are occasionally surprising elements, such as Tana’s refusal to help a wounded Apache; often, films lump all native Americans together, forgetting that tribes were sometimes disparate groups, who hated each other. It’s a decision which causes conflict – of the muddy, cat-fight kind – between her and Claire, a diversion on the otherwise fairly straight arrow journey towards the expected and likely inevitable confrontation with Brock. This, along with other forms of more brutal attrition, do mean that by the time Jessica arrives at her target’s hideout, the film’s title is no longer accurate. Indeed, Jessi is back to ploughing an almost solitary furrow on her mission, made all the more hazardous by Frank knowing she’s on her way.

The supporting actresses are not exactly given more than simple sketches, yet manage to make them feel like actual people. The focus is firmly on Jessica, and I liked Currie in the role, with her managing to portray both a vulnerable side and a steely determination that will not be swayed from her intended path of retribution. Her coolest moment is probably at the end, lighting sticks of dynamite off her cheroot and tossing them to great effect. Admittedly, when it comes to the finale, Brock and his men tend to demonstrate all the shooting skills of Imperial Stormtroopers, and you wonder how they ever managed to rob anyone. A great ending though, with a twist I did not see coming, providing the icing on the cake of a unexpectedly pleasant surprise.

Dir: Al Adamson
Star: Sondra Currie, Ellyn Stern, Geoffrey Land, Ben Frank

Annie Oakley (film)

  By

★★★
“Annie Gets Her Gun.”

While not exactly an accurate retelling of the life of noted sure-shot Annie Oakley, this is breezily entertaining. Indeed, you can make a case for this being one of the earliest “girls with guns” films to come out in the talking pictures era. There’s no denying Oakley (Stanwyck) qualifies here. The first time we see her, she’d delivering a load of game birds – all shot through the head to avoid damaging the flesh – to her wholesaler. When barnstorming sharpshooter Toby Walker (Foster) blows into town, Annie ends up in a match with him, which she ends up throwing, due in part to her crush on him. She still gets a job alongside Walker, in the Wild West show run by the renowned ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (Olsen) and his partner, Jeff Hogarth (Douglas). But Annie and Toby’s relationship fractures after he accidentally shoots her in the hand, while concealing an injury affecting his sight.

This hits the ground running, and roughly the first third plays decades ahead of its time. Don’t forget, this was made only fifteen years after women were granted the right to vote across the entire United States. Its depiction of a strong, perfectly independent woman as personified by Stanwyck is great – there’s also Walker’s former “friend,” Vera Delmar (Perl Kelton). When sternly warned the saloon she’s about to enter is no place for a lady, she breezily replies, “Oh, I’m no lady.” I’m quite impressed this was able to get through, given the rigid imposition of the strict Hays Code, beginning the previous year, with its goal “that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated.”

Almost inevitably, it can’t maintain this pace. There’s too much footage of the Wild West Show, which seems to consist largely of people on horses milling around the arena. I guess people were easily satisfied in those days. Meanwhile, the romance between Oakley and Walker (an entirely artificial construction, with Walker never existing as an actual person), fails to be convincing. Somewhat more interesting is the portrayal of Chief Sitting Bull, the Native American warrior who also became part of Wild Bill’s show. While depicted largely for comic relief – witness the scene where he turns out the gas lights in his bedroom by shooting at them – he is played by a genuine Indian, Chief Thunder Bird, which is considerably more progressive than some movies. He is also instrumental in Annie and Toby’s reconciliation.

Stanwyck does an excellent job of depicting the heroine, portraying her as someone absolutely confident in her own talents. I’d like to have seen more development of her character: as is, the one we see delivering quail at the start of the film, is almost identical to the one we see making up with Toby in its final shot. Sadly, the subject didn’t live to see her life immortalized in film, having died nine years before this was released. I think she’d probably have been quite pleased with her depiction.

Dir: George Stevens
Star: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Melvyn Douglas, Moroni Olsen

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Women’s Justice, by Chrissy Wissler

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

In the 1880’s, the town of Butte, Montana is a mining boom-town – instead of gold, it’s mostly copper which fuels its economy. The wealth comes at a cost, as the huge amounts of acrid smoke belched from the smelters and plants turns day into night, along with creating perpetually “noxious, disgusting air.” Off the train and into this smog steps Cat, a woman with no shortage of a past. A former prostitute, but also a ranch-hand, her preferred outfit of blue jeans and six-shooter is most atypical for a woman of the times. Almost immediately, she is drawn into the mysterious and suspicious death on the street of another “fallen woman,” Norma. The apparent cover-up goes right up to “Copper Kings” such as Marcus Daly (a real tycoon from that time and place), and it quickly becomes clear that whoever was behind Norma’s demise, is none to happy to find Cat looking into the matter. To find the truth, she’s going to have to navigate her way through both ends of Butte society.

What stands out for me is Wissler’s incredibly verbose style, in which a whack on the shoulder with a plank merits several pages of descriptive prose. There’s one sequence, where Cat returns to the boarding-house where she’s staying, and discovers an unexpected dinner party in progress, when it feels like chapters elapse between the front-door and dining-room. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s not like she’s Alexandre Dumas, getting paid by the word. Indeed, it’s often interesting to get a deep dive into Cat’s thoughts and motivations, since she has a past that influences much of her behaviour; not least, a hinted-at violent incident involving her sister, Alice and her abusive husband. But there were times when I would have been happier for the plot to move forward at less of a glacial pace.

There’s no denying the author’s talents at generating the nightmarish world, with its poisonous air, and yawning gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Those like Norma can be pitched from the former category into the latter in a moment – and return is almost impossible. Instead, you can end up in the tunnels below the city streets, a virtual living hell for the lowest of the low. Cat’s history gives her an ability to empathize with the lower classes, while still capable of interacting with their “betters”, though there are times when her abilities seem to come close to telepathy, in terms of reading people. She could probably make a great living as a poker player. And despite the pistol on her hip, the action is limited – she never gets to draw it at all. Even the final face-off with Norma’s killer in those tunnels, entered from one of Butte’s grandest brothels, sees her largely defer to others in the name of justice.

There are some typos and missing words in the text, and I wonder if the word “bum” – as in rear – would genuinely have been used repeatedly by an 1880’s cowgirl. It seems rather too British: surely “ass” or “butt” (not to be confused with Butte!) would have been more likely? But despite flaws, this does remains an evocative depiction of a time and place which feels different from the usual Western fare. And it’s all the better for that.

Author: Chrissy Wissler
Publisher: Blue Cedar Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 2 in the Cowboy Cat series.