Classic Westerns: Johnny Mack Brown Four Feature

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Four JMB westerns to enjoy! CROOKED TRAIL: Jim Blake (Johnny Mack Brown) happens upon Harve Tarlton (John Merton) who is left dying in the desert. Blake saves Tarltons life, and makes him a partner in a gold mining claim, but soon Tarlton's back to his fugitive ways. BOOT HILL BRIGADE: Johnny saves the people from the dirty rotten land grabbers! Johnny Mack Brown stars in BURY ME NOT ON THE LONE PRAIRIE as a mining engineer whose brother is murdered by claim jumpers. In LONE STAR TRAIL, the West's greatest Star team roars along a lead swept trail of vengeance.

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: All
• Number of Discs: 1
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Screen: Black and White
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Features:
  • Bonus Trailers:
  • Little Big Horn
  • The Cowboy

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Johnny Mack Brown - Blaze Barker
       Claire Rochelle - Bobbie Reynolds
       Dick Curtis - Bull Berke
       Horace Murphy - Calico Haynes
       Frank LaRue - Jeff Reynolds
       Edward Cassidy - John Porter
       Bobby Nelson - Tug Murdock
       Earl Hodgins - Maj. Cyrus Jenkins
       Jack Ingram - Dan Jason
       Frank Ellis - Brown
       Art Mix

• Director:

  Roy S. Luby, Sam Newfield, Ray Taylor

• Producer:

  A.W. Hackel, Oliver Drake

• Screenwriter:

  George Plympton

• Screen Story:

  Harry F. Olmstead

• Screenwriter:

  Sherman Lowe, Victor McLeod, Oliver Drake

• Screen Story:

  Victor Halperin

• Cinematographer:

  Bert Longenecker, William Sickner

• Composer (Music Score):

  Hans Salter

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Hans Salter

• Editor:

  Roy S. Luby, Ray Snyder

• Art Director:

  John B. Goodman

REVIEW:

• About halfway through this low-budget Western, Johnny Mack Brown marries leading lady Lucille Browne. For a genre in which the hero more often than not rides into the sunset, alone, this turn of event is truly startling. Why the redoubtable Brown would marry this particularly sullen prairie flower whom he has just met remains a mystery; but he does, and she continues to sulk, albeit prettily. Unlike her husband, however, Lucille is not fooled for a minute by John Merton, an escaped murderer whom Brown foolishly has made his partner. Merton, alas, is the little Western's second surprise. Usually cast as a Boss Villain or the chief henchman, Merton is here allowed to show new facets of his acting talents. Yes, he's still a villain of the blackest kind, but until the brutal finale, Merton and Mack Brown enjoy a kind of camaraderie that is very unusual in a low-budget oater like this. Their horsing around seems realistic and their friendship rings more true than the often belabored hero-comic sidekick combinations. It doesn't last, of course, but in these early scenes, John Merton is allowed to play a multi-faceted character for perhaps the only time in his long career in Westerns. Directed by S. Roy Luby, The Crooked Trail has the usual long stretches of inertia endemic to independently produced B-Westerns, but the acting is generally above par -- with special kudos to Mack Brown, Merton, and John Van Pelt as a no-nonsense prospector -- and George Plympton's screenplay at least attempted something a bit different. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi