Rails Into Laramie

A rebel soldier, John Payne, is assigned by his commander in chief to find who is behind the flop in the building of a railway in Laramie. The army official finds alcoholic people and drink plentiful in the railway workers. He also meets a beautiful ally, Mari Blanchard, an exdancer and owner of a bustly saloon along with Dan Duryea, an ex-colleague of Payne who is behind it all. As Duryea is really a booze peddler who along with his hoodlum, Lee Van Cleef, deliver alcohol to the labourers who are building the railroad. Both of them tangle into a twisted confrontation and at the end a thrilling fight takes place aboard a train. This is the saga of the man who blazed the trail for the iron horse across the wide frontier.

Run-of-the-mill Universal International Pictures with usual elements, such as noisy action, thrills, crossfire, drama, romance and some spectacular action scenes on a train. There is even some historical remark, as the jury who judges Dan Duryea is formed by women, and resulted to be actually the first served by women in the state of Wyoming 1870 . Stars John Payne, one of the popular actors of the forties and fifties, today a little forgotten. He starred the classy Miracle in 34th street and performed all kinds of genres as Noir: Slighly scarlet, Kansas City confidential, The vanquished, Adventure: Raiders of seven seas, Crosswinds, Tripoli, Iceland and Western : Santa Fe passage, Silver lode, Tennessee's partner, The Road to Denver. He also starred various Tv series and episodes as The restless gun and Zane Grey. Payne is well accompanied by a good support cast as the prestigious Dan Duryea here co-starring , the habitual baddie Lee Van Cleef pre-Sergio Leone, James Griffith, Harry Shannon, George Chandler, Stephen Chase, Douglas Kennedy and Joyce Mackenzie.

The motion picture titled Rails into Laramie was professionally directed by Jesse Hibbs though with no much enthusiasm. He directed a lot of films and several episodes of notorious TV episodes. His fetish actor was Audie Murphy, whom directed in known and big boxoffice films as To hell and back, World in my corner, Medal of honor, Ride a crooked trail. Rating 5/10. Passable and acceptable but average.

Seems to be a re-hash of Kansas Pacific with a lot of the same actors!

Progress on the railroad has pretty much ground to a halt as the workers spend most of their time drinking rotgut in Dan Duryea's boozer.

The leading citizens of the town request military help and tough soldier, Payne, is appointed as a sort of temporary marshal. Trouble is, he's an old mate of Duryea so it looks as though there's going to be a conflict of interests.

This is an above average Universal western: the two main protagonists play off each other well and there is excellent support from a very large cast of familiar westerners (many uncredited). Special mentions must go to Lee Van Cleef as a menacing, trigger happy bad guy (was he ever anything else?), Mari Blanchard as a saloon girl with a heart of gold (was she ever anything else?) and James Griffith, cast against type in a humorous role, as a bumbling ineffectual lawman.

Action scenes are well staged - particularly those on the trains - the photography is first class and the Technicolor beautiful as always.

Oh, and as an added bonus for B western fans, there's a title song over the opening credits rumbled out by the ever popular Rex Allen....

Army sergeant John Payne is ordered to clear up the situation in Laramie single-handedly. He finds his childhood buddy Dan Duryea running a saloon and paying off everyone in sight to keep the work moving as slow as possible; the longer it takes, the more of the rail workers' pay he can pocket. Payne gets himself appointed marshal and jails all the baddies.... but their friends on the juries keep setting them free.

It's another of the 'Shaky A' westerns from Universal in this period, directed by the reliable Jesse Hibbs. Like most of the westerns from Universal in this period, it's in Technicolor, has a couple of minor stars, a few key character actors like Barton Maclane and Lee van Cleef and a spectacular finale of a fight in a train that's about to crash into a passenger train. The result is good, if standard fun.

It's produced by Ted Richmond. He began producing B movies for Columbia in 1940. When Cohn shut down his series, he switched to Universal, where he worked on all sorts of programmers. He produced 56 movies by 1957, and then slowed down. Over the next 22 years, he produced 10 movies, including PAPILLON. He died in 2013 at the age of 103.

I guess Audie Murphy was not available to play in this Jessie Hibbs' western ; Hibbs who was his fetish director - as Lon Chaney was with Tod Browning or Gregory Peck with Hank King - and Dan Duryea already faced Murphy in RIDE CLEAR OF DIABLO the very same year. So, replacing Audie Murphy by John Payne deserves to be noticed. And I did not remember Payne playing in Universal films either. That said, this western, even without the most decorated soldier in WW2, remains solid, taut, efficient enough to grab your attention. I did not watch it since a while and I am glad to see it again. A railroad western, a genre in the genre; as you also had posse westerns, military fort westerns, town under outlaws rule westerns, cattle baron or ruthless landlords vs rustlers westerns, indian wars westerns....