Billy the Kid: 20 Classic Features [4 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Buster Crabbe, Bob Steele, Al St. John. The exploits of the legendary outlaw are featured here with Bob Steele playing the 'Kid in the first three films followed by Buster Crabbe in the role for the next 17 of these 20 Western classics. Includes Billy the Kid's Gun Justice (1940), Billy the Kid in Texas (1940), Billy the Kid's Range War (1941), Cattle Stampede (1943), Billy the Kid Wanted (1941), Billy the Kid Trapped (1942), The Kid Rides Again (1943), Blazing Frontier (1944), Frontier Outlaws (1944), Shadows of Death (1945) and more. 1940-45/b&w/18 hrs., 26 min/NR/fullscreen.

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 4
• Screen: Black and White
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Bob Steele - Billy the Kid
       Joan Barclay - Ellen
       Dave "Tex" O'Brien - Jeff
       Anne Jeffreys - Sally
       Charles King - Saunders
       Charles "Slim" Whitaker - Sheriff
       Frank LaRue - Tom Farrell
       Edward Cassidy - Sheriff
       Al Ferguson - Steve
       Budd Buster - Clerk
       Alden Chase - Dave
       Budd Buster - Jensen
       Buddy Roosevelt - Spike
       Ralph Peters - Jailer
       Al Ferguson

• Director:

  Sam Newfield, Sherman Scott

• Producer:

  Sigmund Neufeld, Rudolph Sternad

• Screenwriter:

  Joseph O'Donnell, Oliver Drake, Fred K. Myton, William Lively, Patricia Harper, George Milton, Milton M. Raison, George Wallace Sayre

• Cinematographer:

  John H. Greenhalgh, Jr., Robert C. Cline

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Lew Porter

• Composer (Music Score):

  Johnny Lange, Lew Porter, Leo Erdody

• Editor:

  Holbrook Todd, Robert O. Crandall

• First Assistant Director:

  Harold E. Knox

REVIEW:

• It is a toss-up whether Bob Steele or Buster Crabbe makes the better Billy the Kid in the PRC series bearing the name of the notorious outlaw. In either case, the character has been whitewashed to the point where he resembles any other low-budget sagebrush hero. Steele at least endows the character with a certain grit lacking in the more suave Crabbe, whose Kid is even more romanticized. But when all is said and done, Billy the Kid in Texas, like so many other PRC prairie tales, belongs squarely to veteran slapstick comic Al St. John, whose character, "Fuzzy," became so popular that he, at one point, appeared in two series simultaneously, the Billy the Kid oaters and The Lone Rider Westerns. He was his endearing old self in all of them. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi