Estampida

This movie may be memorable for being Blake Edwards' second movie script, but it remains a B western with a good budget, one of Allied Artists' efforts to lift itself out of the shrinking market for Saturday morning kiddie fare. It does so by some adult themes and a bit of depth in its character study, as cattle rancher Rod Cameron denies water to the nesters coming onto the range, despite the obvious attraction he and Gale Storm have for each other.

It's also visually darker than most B westerns, with the darkness lurking around the edge of the frame as people ride their horses, and in several still compositions shot, apparently, in dense forest. Everyone tries to make this a more important movie than it winds up being by techniques adopted from other film genres, but Rod Cameron's simple, muscular line readings defeat the effort.

...Gale Storm's size 5 pointy-toe boots on the shin, Ouch! All this in Allied Artist's rock'em-sock'em 1949 western Stampede. Allied Artists, not to be confused with United Artists, was an outgrowth of cheap movie font Monogram, a new label for the modest production company's more expensive pictures. While the budget for Stampede was no doubt comfortably below that of the $1,200,000 layout for the company's critical and financial hit of 1947, It Happened On Fifth Avenue, this highly entertaining western nevertheless qualified as a medium or "B-plus" production. But director Lesley Selander and producer Blake Edwards, who also co-scripted, were a pair who knew how to make every available dollar count. Selander was a veteran of dozens,(eventually over a hundred) B-grade westerns and other programmers starring the likes of Tim Holt, William Boyd, and Gene Autry, while Edwards would later gain fame and considerable fortune with the popular Peter Gunn television show and the fabulously successful Pink Panther series of feature pictures. No wonder Stampede comes off a tightly-knit, impressively filmed, dramatically engaging, outdoor picture of the type highly satisfying to the western aficionado.

The plot, cattlemen versus homesteaders, could be labeled western scenario #6, but who cares -- there hasn't been a new story since 33 A.D. It's the treatment that counts, and it is very well done here with a number of intriguing twists and some unexpected turns. Tall, raw-boned Cameron plays a cattle baron, so hard-nosed in resisting the homesteaders who have legally bought land he had regarded as his range, that he comes off almost an antihero in the opening reels. Diminutive Gale Storm plays the feisty homesteader tomboy who provides his formidable opposition, and of course his eventual love interest. Good support comes from Johny Mack Brown as a sure-shot sheriff friendly to the cattleman, Don Castle as Cameron's happy-go-lucky brother, Jonathan Hale as the cattleman's fair-minded attorney, with John Miljan, Donald Curtis, and John Eldridge as a trio of shady land dealers stirring up trouble.

Much of the considerable entertainment value of this modest western come from the intelligent script by Edwards and John C. Champion, with well-developed characters and lots of snappy, colorful dialog, especially the sharp exchanges between Storm and the two cattlemen brothers. Black and white cinematography by Harry Neumann is first rate. The brutal fist fight segueing into a gunfight and back again to a fist fight inside a dark stable qualifies as a minor masterpiece of action filming. The starkly lighted, obliquely angled shots in this an other night scenes demonstrates how what is now known as the film noir style, all the rage in the late 1940's, filtered down even to unpretentious westerns.

Stampede is an action packed, dramatically engaging, beautifully filmed, smoothly edited western. Top notch entertainment from Old Hollywood's Golden Era.

Big budget is a relative term and while Stampede wouldn't pass muster as a B film at MGM, Paramount etc. it's a good and grim western from Allied Artists. It's a cut rate version with the same issues about ranchers and homesteaders that MGM's Sea Of Grass or Paramount's Shane have. In a far more humorous vein John Wayne's McLintock explores the same issues.

Rod Cameron certainly sits as tall in the saddle as the Duke did. Unlike John Wayne, Cameron never escaped B pictures. He's the local McLintock in Stampede who built himself a nice cattle empire with his more easy going brother Don Castle. He's also built himself a dam and settlers who've bought parcels of land now have no water.

There seems to be a lot of personal animus directed at Cameron by villains John Eldredge and John Miljan for no discernible reason other than jealousy. They seem to want to bring him down just on general principles. Among the settlers that Miljan and Eldredge bring are Steve Clark and his daughter Gale Storm.

Cameron may never have cracked the A picture market as a star. But Stampede is a fine B western and the climax is the title.

Rod Cameron plays iron-willed Mike McCall, an 1880s Arizona cattleman marked for death by corrupt land developers and victimized by their villainous scheme to stir up a rampage that sends McCall's panicked herd pounding across the range and toppling helplessly over a high cliff...

Stampede is a standard settlers vs ranchers story, though the real villain is Stanton, a land developer, but as expected there's some gunplay, fistfights and a stampede (Of course) to keep things interesting. It's well-paced, has some snappy dialogue, and a killer action scene in the barn which is an eye opener- two guys jump Rod Cameron and there's some edgy fist fight, then gunplay and some fist fighting in the loft. Phew!

Settlers from back east are headed to Arizona. Sleazy businessmen LeRoy Stanton and Stanley Cox had sold them the land, but it's bone dry. Rancher brothers Mike and Tim McCall own the needed land and they have dam the river for their cattle. Tim falls for Connie Dawson, the daughter of a settler.

It's an old B-western with the standard story of settlers vs ranchers. At least, they do real horse riding and spend a good amount of time outside. It's always old timey comedy gold to spank the leading lady. Jumping off the cliff does need something better looking, but the trick photography required is probably beyond them. This is fine for a B-western.