A routine programmer
Yesterday we were discussing the series of Paramount Westerns starring Randolph Scott, co-starring Noah Beery and Harry Carey, with Buster Crabbe, Barton MacLane and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams in the cast too, directed by Henry Hathaway and photographed by Ben Reynolds, based on a story by Zane Grey. It sounds a pretty good line-up, doesn't it. Those are good credentials. And indeed, they were really quite good for the day.
The weakest of them, though, and the most routine of these 57-minute programmers was Man of the Forest.
Sounds like a dangerously anarchist slogan for 1933
The
whole thing is desperately old-fashioned and resembles a two-reeler silent but
with words. It’s not surprising that it does, though, because, as we said yesterday, a lot of footage
of a previous Beery/Carey silent movie was used. It’s not helped by the fact
that the surviving print is grainy and scratched and the sound is crackly and
it jumps.
Noah and Harry (Sr., obviously)
The Zane
Grey tale Man of the Forest had been
filmed twice before, in 1921 and 1926, and it was common for the
studios in the early 1930s to dig out old silent programmers and remake them as
talkies, using a lot of the old movie to save on production costs.
The 1933
version, written by Jack Cunningham and Harold Shumate, and almost
unrecognizable from the novel, tells of a mountain man (Scott) who lives in the
forest with a pet cougar called Mike. Villainous Noah Beery (Sr., obviously) is
after the water rights of Randy’s good friend Harry Carey (Sr., obviously), who
can’t register them officially because he has a criminal record. Harry’s plan
is to register them in the name of his niece Alice (Varna Hillie, looking
incredibly 1920s) but of course Noah and his thugs, led by Barton MacLane, with
crooked Sheriff Tom Kennedy, will stop at nothing to prevent that.
Dig Randy's mustache
Kidnapping,
gunfights, arson and, of course, cougar-maulings are on the menu as
Randy saves the day (I am giving nothing away here) and gets the girl.
Actually, on the set the cougar had a go at Scott. They let the cameras roll, though, as it was a good take. They also left in the bit where the mule kicked Williams in the rear end.
Actually, on the set the cougar had a go at Scott. They let the cameras roll, though, as it was a good take. They also left in the bit where the mule kicked Williams in the rear end.
Scott
has a surprising caddish black mustache, which would more appropriately have adorned
the face of the villain. This was because his predecessor in the silent version, Jack Holt, had one and he needed to look similar. For the same reason the blonde Verna Hillie had to wear a brunette wig.
Missable...
The earlier Buffalo Stampede was a much better movie than this one.
All in
all, I fear that this Randolph Scott Western, his fifth of 61, is eminently
missable.
Unless you are heavily into mountain lions.
Unless you are heavily into mountain lions.
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