Customer Reviews

Young Billy Young

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are a fan of old-school westerns...how can you truly go too far wrong with Burt Kennedy writing and directing and star power like Robert Mitchum (in any year) and Angie Dickinson (still smouldering in 1969)...not to mention Robert Walker Jr and David Carradine as the youth demographic.
This isn't a top tier Western or second tier...but middle of the road. However, I'm thrilled to have a decent looking widescreen print of it for around ten bucks as I love Robert Mitchum and hang on his every word. If you are a fan of his or Angies...pick it up. If you are searching for Westerns from the 60's...there are many many more places to start than this one.

The screenplay was written by Burt Kennedy based upon the western novel WHO RIDES WITH WYATT? by Will Henry (or Clay Fisher, real name Henry Wilson Allen). Movie was also released under the title Who Rides With Kane? The theme song is sung by Robert Mitchum before, and after the movie.


The plot is fairly straight forward, lawman (Ben Kane) seeks revenge against man (Frank Boone) who killed his son (son is played by Christopher Mitchum). Being appointed marshal of Lordsburg puts the killer within the lawman's reach. Plot though differing from Will Henry's book will hold the viewer's attention, although we have seen similar plots in other movies, yet with the cast of this movie everything seems to work. I received more enjoyment in watching this western than I expected.


The cast as mentioned beyond Mitchum, Dickinson, and Walker, Jr. includes: David Carradine, Jack Kelly, John Anderson, Rodopho Acosta, Parley Baer, and Paul Fix, among others. It was also exceedingly good to see 'Maverick' Jack Kelly once again in a movie and he played the black hat to its fullest.

The location of filming will be apparent to most western buffs, Old Tucson, Kinney Road, Arizona. Down through the years how many westerns one wonders have been filmed in that location, probably equalled or exceeded only by Lone Pine, California.

Most reviews will allow only a couple stars for this movie, yet with everything working as smoothly as it does, plus the boatload of veteran actors, I give it 4 stars. Having several dozen books by Will Henry/Clay Fisher on the shelf, I enjoyed it very much, a movie to watch again. Almost as good as YELLOWSTONE KELLY, but not quite.

Semper Fi.

As much as I love westerns and like Robert Mitchum in almost everything this was a disappointment for me. It's not terrible, it's just not very good! A totally inappropriate (for a western) music score by Jazzman Shelly Manne doesn't help! It might be worth a look on Turner Classic Movies or MGM HD but I seriously doubt even devout western or Mitchum fans would want to sit though this thing more than once.

I must admit that I am a real sucker for Robert Mitchum westerns. He is just so natural in the role of a cowboy or any western role for that matter. A lot of western regulars are in this movie and add to the flavor of it. Angie Dickinson looks great - doesn't she always?

This is a good story and acted out well. The print is a good one.

You will not be sorry if you purchase this.

Ben Kane (Robert Mitchum) has been cleaning up bad towns for over 20 years, but for the last decade or so one longing has possessed him: to catch up with the man named Boone who murdered his teenage son in Dodge City. Arriving in Bisbee, Arizona, to inquire about a lawman's position, he's told that it's basically what he considers "a boy's job"--the town of Lordsburg, which is in Bisbee's district, is plagued by "trouble and a year's worth of back taxes." But when he learns that the trouble is caused by Boone (John Anderson), he changes his mind. Meanwhile, the youthful gunslinger Billy Young (Robert Walker), fresh from a gun job in Mexico where he was abandoned to escape on his own by Boone's son Jesse (David Carradine), crosses Kane's path and, through a series of unexpected events, they become on-again-off-again allies. Their relationship is rocky to say the least--each one lays the other out once or twice--yet Billy soon finds himself looking up to Kane and unwilling to allow him to use Jesse as a pawn in his quest to avenge his own son's death. Kane has also met Lily Beloit (Angie Dickinson, who also appeared in Rio Bravo (Two-Disc Special Edition), which was later remade as El Dorado, in which Mitchum starred with John Wayne), the saloon dancer who is the mistress of Boone's ally, saloonowner John Behan (Jack Kelly), while Billy finds himself attracted to--and defending Kane to--Evvie Cushman (Deana Martin), the daughter of Lordsburg's doctor. A sudden siege of the jail brings the two unlikely allies together again and is broken with the aid of Kane's old friend, stagecoach driver Charlie (Paul Fix).

Directed by Western stalwart Burt Kennedy (who was also responsible for such titles as Support Your Local Gunfighter/Support Your Local Sheriff, The Train Robbers, The War Wagon, and The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (another Mitchum vehicle--see my review), and very loosely adapted from a Will Henry novel that was actually about Wyatt Earp (the only thing that survives from the original is the name of John Behan, who, better known as "Johnny," was the county sheriff with whom the Earp brothers butted heads on several occasions), this little-known Western features two sympathetic characters who play off each other well; Walker is especially noteworthy for his believable portrayal of a young man who's "quick with a gun and not afraid of the devil or anyone else," yet wavering between good and evil--the kind of youth whose life will be irrevocably changed by his meeting with a man like Kane. It might have benefited from a bit more exposition in the script (why has it taken Kane so long to find out where Boone went after Dodge? Was Lordsburg always Boone's headquarters, and was he always a power there?), and Lily's assertion that no "decent" man would want her after her years in saloons rings a little false to me (in the West, women as well as men were judged less on their pasts than on what they were and did in the present), but it offers a good if prickly "buddy" relationship (I've always liked "buddy" films), humor, and action, and it moves along quickly and enjoyably. It definitely deserves to be better known.

"A" Typical western late 50's or early 60's Angie Dickinson, Robert Mitchum. This is a fairly good little movie good fighting evil and good wins as usual with a few interesting twists.