Santa Fe Scouts

Republic release of Louis Gray production. Directed by Howard Bretherton. Original screenplay by Morton Grant and Betty Burbridge. Photography Reggie Lanning; editor Charles Craft; musical score Mort Glickman. Completed February 1942. Running time 56 minutes.

Rip snortin', shootin' and sluggin' in this western programmer is not, as in most of the type, carried along merely by thin story thread, but rather intersperses a yarn with better than average western dramatic values, staged with well planned direction by Howard Bretherton and production by Louis Gray. And it runs well with spots of dialogue that western followers will laugh with, not nonsensicalities that are laughed at.

There's no ‘Covered Wagon' epic between the covers of this one, of course, nor does anyone claim such, but it does roll up into a meaty bit that will satisfy any dual program where westerns are part of regular or occasional fare. Climax has punch, stampeding a husky herd of cattle through a canyon under moonlight to overrun a gang barricaded behind a wagon overturned in a narrow road by crooked squatters to prevent posse from reaching the acreage that squatters had hoped to seize by quirk of a new law. Photography, by Reggie Lanning, is well done, especially night stuff and moonlight shadows on clouds over the canyon. Any credit for story fabricated on interest goes to Morton Grant and Betty Burbridge, who scripted from characters based on Wm Colt MacDonald. Cast does favorable western performance, taking its job in stride, rarely forcing and certainly was not stinted numerically by the producers.

Three Mesquiteers, those ridin' hardsters of popular Republic series--Bob Steele, Tom Tyler and Jimmie Dodd, learn, by devious means, of a plot hatched by crooked squatters to seize title to ranch which widow and son, ranching elsewhere, had permitted them to work because they were old friends of boy's father. Squatters and their henchmen are finally off the ranch 15 minutes before midnight when they could have gained legal right to possession, run off after series of hard fights, hard ridin' and hard connivin'.

Junior is a pain in the neck to the Three Mesquiteers, yet when the 21-year-old son of the woman rancher for whom the redoubtable trio work gets into trouble, they pitch in to get him out. The plot in which the far from pleasant young man becomes enmeshed has to do with a phony murder, seemingly committed by his sweetheart. In order to buy the plotters' silence, he is forced to allow them to racketeer by charging for water at a waterhole. What he doesn't know is that ownership of the property will, within a couple of weeks, be lost to him via squatter's rights.

An audience, however, knows all along about the ‘murder' and also about everything else that is confusing the characters. It isn't enough that they slowly solve things for themselves in the Louis Gray production, and despite the large amount of riding, fighting and shooting loaded into ‘Santa Fe Scouts' by director Howard Bretherton, the show never climbs above sub-average for the Three Mesquiteer westerns.

Bob Steele, Tom Tyler and Jimmie Dodd are good as usual as the sturdy trio. John James dashes through as Junior, and Lois Collier is the pretty sweetheart. Elizabeth Valentine does the pioneer woman/mother agreeably, and most of the others are standard heavies. Reggie Lanning photographed.

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