I would have ranked this as an average western, but the Indians' dialogue is so ludicrous that I have to rate it just a notch below. Barbara Stanwyck is always a plus. But pairing her with Ronald Reagan counts for little: they don't even kiss. She and Coloradus seem more attracted to each other, but I guess that pairing was impossible.
... Justin
Well....
It's not a great movie if you're looking for a history lesson, and the writing is not exactly Shakespeare, but it is a classic 1950s Saturday Afternoon Matinee kind of Western. It's got all the cliché Western stuff including the little trombone riff whenever one of the bad "injuns" shows up on screen. The bad guys are really slimy; the good guys are squeaky clean. People keep firing handguns from running horses and never seem to miss! They even have a grizzled old man making salty comments like a Walter Brenan character. There's always some guy named Rufus/Cletus/Festus with a couple of missing teeth saying stuff like "Don't cotton to no fancy city food! Ruther shewt me a possum and roast 'im on a cow chip farr". You can't have a 50's Western without him, really.
The interesting part is at the end not only do the good guys prevail, but they kill every single last bad guy. Not only does good triumph, but so totally destroys evil that after that life would have to be perfect!
(I guess they weren't planning on a sequel...)
I assume Jonesy and Farrel would be "gittin' hitched" after this. Let's hope the marriage was happy: they were both packing heat and really good shots!
It's not great, but it's kind of fun!
Ha! A parody of these old westerns should definitely have a character called Rufus Cletus Festus!
You hope they get married? I just hope they kissed!
... Justin
-he did put his arm around her in the closing scene.
I don't hope they get married. I just hope if they did they left the "shewtin' arns" in the hall closet during arguments!
"This here house ainta big enough fer the two of us!"
-or-
"Maw? why did you shewt Paw?"
"He wouldn't put the dern seat down!"
My read of the romantic part of this is this was far from being a chick flick and the intended audience (probably teenage boys) was more interested in "shewtin'" than a "whole buncha fancy schmancy hand holdin' ". Since they couldn't show what a teenage boy really wanted to see they just ended the movie before it got mushy and left it to us to decide what happens next.
This is definitely a stock movie: somebody said "We need a Western", so they mixed in everything the movie cookbook said it needed and served it up as the "B" film in double features all over the place!
Grizzled old men: even Sherriff Woody in Toy Story had Stinky Pete the Prospector!
I'd like to see a movie where Rufus Cletus Festus and Generic Brand Grizzled Old Coot fight to fill the obligatory old coot role.
I know it was 1954, but you'd think Barbara Stanwyck would have had enough star power to demand a kissing scene at the end. The filmmakers could have put up a title card beforehand: "Note to Teenage Boys: The Good Part Is Over."
... Justin
You never know...there may have been a NON-kissing clause in someone's contract. It wouldn't have been the only time, either. When "I Love Lucy" was in production Vivian Vance had it in her contract that the script would never, ever call for her to kiss William Frawley. (Ouch!, that's cold!)
There's kind of a spectrum of Westerns that runs all the way from Roy Rogers to Clint Eastwood. In a Roy Rogers Western everybody has a big smile and sings songs, the guns are silver, their clothing is fresh from the laundry and their horses perfectly groomed. The good guys wear white hats, the bad guys wear black ones, and it's obvious why they are either good or bad. In a Clint Eastwood Western, everybody is a filthy drifter, half the women are whores, the clothing is ragged and dirty, the guns are greasy black and as the "Hero" Eastwood is usually half a psychopath nursing a dark secret and often seeking revenge.
"Cattle Queen" is somewhere in the middle, but I think it leans more towards the Roy Rogers side.
Reality probably ran more towards Clint Eastwood...
I'm not surprised to hear about that no-kissing clause. Vivian Vance truly hated William Frawley. She was performing in a play when he died. She had the cast join her in celebration.
I think you hit on why Cattle Queen, entertaining though it is, is an unsuccessful movie. It's not one thing or another.
... Justin
I guess it depends a lot on what you mean by success. I really doubt the people who made this movie were shocked when they didn't get a best picture Oscar that year, or that Orson Welles ever regretted that he wasn't involved.
I think they were just trying to make a nice little Western and make some money at it. They did both.
This wasn't going to be some ground breaking epic, because those cost money. This wasn't going to be some cutting-edge Art film, because those lose money.
What use is Cattle Queen to the Movie Fan today? It's simply typical of its kind. If you want to see what a 1950s western is like and watch this, you have the flavor.
The fact that it stars a future President is kind of different, but the movie itself just good clean fun.
It's kind of like those paintings of dogs playing poker people have in their dens: certainly not great Art, but good for a little amusement now and then.
They did kiss and it was pretty interesting. Stanwyck initiated!
But she and Reagan had zero chemistry. (Kind of odd that he shoots at her early in the film.)
I was recently in Glacier and looked all over for signs of Glacier in this film, but couldn't recognize a thing. So much interesting scenery there. Seems they might have used some of it.
Agree that a lot of the dialog -- not just that of the Indians -- was pretty bad.
And where was the army that they promised us for the end?
I took this film as a Cold War parable. Stanwyck and Reagan are the US of A while McCord and his flunkies are the Commies. The two sides are squabbling over some piece of land. Germany? Korea? Viet Nam? Both sides have indigenous locals -- Indians -- that they are backing. In fact some of the Indians demand rifles, much like the North Vietnamese wanted help from the Russians. Then the film becomes wish fulfillment because it's a Cold War that can be won by fighting it out rather than the hopeless mutually assured destruction situation it really was.
Yes, you could read it as Cold War, or even as the Middle East. What I think lifts this film a bit is that you have good guys and bad guys on both the white man and the Indian sides. On both sides, in fact, there are extremists who want to push war and destruction and moderates struggling mightily to keep the peace.
In fact, what would be unthinkable in the real world actually happens here: the extremists on both sides actually recognize their mutual interest and can trust one another enough to make deals (even though on at least one side it's in bad faith).
The film sides with the moderates and so must be considered a plea for moderation.
Got interested in the film only because I visited Glacier National Park and saw a sign somewhere saying that it had been filmed there.