Belle Starr and her Cherokee Indian husband are dead, according to the opening credits, but their unholy union has resulted in a son bearing the “stigma of a born criminal.” Keith Larsen plays The Kid, Belle Starr’s daughter.
He’s already wanted for robbing one gold shipment, a job he didn’t pull. So Sheriff Hanson (Myron Healey) figures he’ll be willing to help rob a second gold shipment, then share the loot with the sheriff and three partners.
Larsen makes off with the gold shipment, but quickly learns it’s all a double cross. He spends the rest of the film trying to find out the identity of the man behind the stage jobs, and man whose identity he doesn’t know.
Is it George Clark, the mine owner? Bart Wren, who owns a share of the mine? Or Tom Wren, Bart’s dad, who runs the newspaper in Griswald? Tom Wren also happens to have a very pretty daughter named Julia (Peggy Castle), who’s engaged to Clark but comes to sympathize with the Kid’s plight as the son of an outlaw and a man who will never be trusted, regardless of the life he leads.
Review:
Minor film features a few unique plot twists, it’s fair share of silliness and benefits from an ending that’s not the happy, ride-off-into-the-sunset conclusion one comes to expect.
As for the silliness: The Kid hears a sizzling sound, whirls and hurls a knife that cuts a fuse just as a pack of dynamite is about to explode. In another scene, a boulder falls on the leg of Bart Wren; The Kid lifts it off as though it was made of paper mache. In yet another, The Kid finds himself trapped in a stable. He simply kicks down two boards and walks right on out. Oh, my.
Dona Drake plays Delores, The Kid’s Mexican lover, a woman willing to sell him out for $1,000. She doesn’t look it, but she was in her late 30s when this film was released She made a name for herself in the late 1930s as Rita Rio, the bandleader of an all-girl orchestra and girls singing group.
Directed by:
Frank McDonald
Cast:
Keith Larsen … The Kid
Dona Drake … Delores
Peggie Castle … Julie Wren
Regis Toomey … Tom Wren
Robert Keys … Bart Wren
James Seay … George Clark
Myron Healey … Sheriff Hanson
Frank Puglia … Manuel
I. Stanford Jolley … Rocky
Paul McGuire … Pinkly
Lane Bradford … Beacher
Runtime: 70 min.
Memorable lines:
The Kid: “Is a year so long a time?”
Manuel, the bartender: “With my last wife, a day was a long time.”
Delores, after The Kid sneaks up on her from behind: “Why you scare me like that?”
The Kid: “Maybe I like you that way.”
The Kid, during a shootout in the livery stable: “Come out in the open, Clark. I wouldn’t want to shoot a horse.”
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