Listen & Be Heard Network Arts News

Vallejo’s Channel 27 – VCAT to you – has been broadcasting Western films on Monday and Wednesday nights from 9:00 to 10:00.  These Westerns fall somewhere between the “so bad it’s good” and “hey, that was kinda cool” categories of filmmaking.  Movie buffs tend to refer to this style as “B-movie,” Kathy Griffin fans would call it “D-List.” 

Monday night’s entry is “Border Caballero,” made in 1936 and starring Tim McCoy.  I first watched this movie as a result of channelsurfing and saw the Puritan Pictures logo (oddly enough, it’s a photograph of a man dressed as a Puritan from colonial American history).  I had once owned a VHS cassette of another Puritan Pictures “Western” from 1936 titled “Ghost Patrol”; its plot involved using a giant ray gun to shoot single-engine airplanes from the sky and also featured Tim McCoy.  Unintentionally hilarious, eerily similar to the Star Wars Initiative proposed fifty years later during the Reagan Administration, and more cheese than a Taco Bell quesadilla.    

“Border Caballero” slathered the cheese factor on even thicker with McCoy’s portrayal of a Hispanic “criminal” as a disguise to infiltrate the movie’s gang of robbers and killers prior to its climax.  His overly-accented “Gonzalez sent me” greeting may have fooled the gang leader but how the “Alfonso Bedoya’s gay brother” attire did is beyond me.  To top it off, Mc Coy was saved from sure death by the gang hottie Goldie, played by Lois January, who took a bullet in the shoulder intended for him.  January remained stoic even during McCoy’s “Does it hurt?” question.  Maybe she knew that she would be forever remembered for her role three years later in “The Wizard of Oz” as the woman who carried a cat in her arms during the film’s Emerald City scenes.  Or maybe the amount of cheese in the movie slowed down the bullet’s impact.

Bullets are big in “Border Caballero.”  Along with the shoot-’em-up finale at – where else? – Bordertown, there are a pair of excellent scenes with McCoy doing some trick shooting as his segment of a traveling medicine show. 

McCoy had been a major star at Columbia Pictures prior to his work with Puritan.  To give an idea of his place in the studio’s hierarchy of actors, a young John Wayne was a supporting actor to McCoy’s starring role in Columbia’s “Two-Fisted Law” from 1932.  By 1935 when McCoy left for greener financial pastures at Puritan, Columbia replaced him in its Western series films with – no, not Wayne – Ken Maynard.

Maynard is the star of VCAT’s Wednesday night Western “Tombstone Canyon.”  Made in 1932, it features Ken playing a character named “Ken” who does a lot of trick riding, fancy shooting, and outwitting numerous bad guys, all in the hope of discovering both the identity of his long-lost father and a mysterious character known as “The Phantom.”  The Phantom is seen for most of the film’s hour-long length with his cape (a cape in a cowboy movie!) hiding his face, looking more like Bela Lugosi’s “replacement” in “Plan 9 from Outer Space” than the Lone Ranger. 

(Lugosi, for those unaware of the film and its history, was dead when those face-covering “Plan 9” scenes were filmed; it was decided that using another actor and hiding his character’s face would compensate for the previous actor’s inability to perform posthumously.) 

The Phantom also would make his presence known, usually while riding his horse, by screaming, his sound reminiscent of Rod Stewart’s efforts as a member of the 1970s rock band the Small Faces, particularly in their hit song “Stay With Me.”  The best part of “Tombstone Canyon,” though, is when Maynard sticks a vacuum cleaner’s extension hose into the home of one of the movie’s antagonists, then says, “I’MMMMMMMMMMM THE PHANNNNNNNNNNTOMMMMMM!” in a spooky voice – which convinces the guy in the house that The Phantom IS in the room and ready to kill him.  Maybe he thought it was Bela Lugosi.  Who wouldn’t be creeped out by Dracula?  Especially in a Western.

“Tombstone Canyon” does provide some handsome footage of California’s Red Rock Canyon near Cantil.  For those of you geology lovers unwilling to sit through sixty minutes of dialog along the lines of “Let’s ride – Ken’s in trouble,” hit the mute button on your remote control device and cue up some Small Faces music.  Can’t be much different than watching “The Wizard of Oz” with Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” playing.  Although, let’s be honest here, every movie suffers without footage of Lois January holding a cat in the Emerald City.  Not even Rod Stewart can fill that empty space.