CANYON PASSAGE (1946)

Set in a frontier town in 1856 Oregon, CANYON PASSAGE doesn't really have any canyon passages but it does have a whole bunch of smaller stories going on.  Most, if not all, of them involve freight company and general store owner Dana Andrews.  He's courting one girl when it's obvious that his best friend's girl likes him much better; his friend is in debt thanks to gambling debts; Ward Bond wants to kill him; his businesses are barely getting by; there's a house to build and Indians are a constant threat.

CANYON PASSAGE is a passable western, but I can't really see any reason why I would want to watch it again any time soon.  The characters (with the exception of that annoying singing dude) were fine, but the story (or should I say stories?) didn't really do anything for me.  Good acting, reasonable pace, beautiful scenery, familiar faces from a strong cast...too bad about the weak script.  Entertaining enough for a single watch.

WICHITA (1955)

Buffalo hunter Wyatt Earp (McCrea) has a run-in with some cowboys movin' a herd not too far outside of the lawless town of Wichita.  Earp moves on into Wichita and within just a few hours he stops a bank robbery.  The mayor hits him up to be the sheriff, but he's not interested.  He just wants to open up a business and live a quite life.  Things change though when those same cowboys ride into town, get properly boozed up and start shooting at anything and everything...including a 5 year old boy standing at his window.  Earp takes the job.

Some people might complain (and rightfully so) that 50 year-old McCrea was too old to play the role of a young 27 year-old Earp, especially since his love interest is the strikingly beautiful 26 year-old Vera Miles, but when it's all said and done...I really enjoyed McCrea's performance.  He's always been one of my favorite actors and he does another excellent job here.  In fact everybody does an excellent job, the only weak link in the entire film was that goofy song sang over the opening and closing credits.  It was painful, but still really funny.  Sorry Tex Ritter fans.

Fast pace, impressive supporting cast full of familiar faces (including Lloyd Bridges, Wallace Ford, Peter Graves, Jack Elam, Edgar Buchanan, Walter Coy, Walter Sande and others including a brief on-screen appearance by a young Sam Peckinpah), nice photography, solid direction by Jacques Tourneur.  All said and done WICHITA is a nice little western.  Recommended.

One interesting thing I found out after watching the film was in 1959 there was a spin-off WICHITA TV show called "Wichita Town" that featured not only McCrea, but his real-life son Jody McCrea.  It aired on NBC and the network was so confident in it's success they didn't even have a pilot episode, they just aired it!  Unfortunately it had a bad time slot and there was already a glut of westerns on the air so it was cancelled after only 24 episodes.  I'd be interested in seeing an episode.

TRY AND GET ME! (1950)

Jobless Frank (THE HITCH-HIKER, IN A LONELY PLACE) Lovejoy has a wife and kid depending on him. His employment prospects are looking like shit and he's down to his last few bucks when he runs into Lloyd Bridges, a slick-talking small time hoodlum who's looking for a driver. Frank doesn't want to do it, but he doesn't really have a choice. They successfully pull off a couple of convenience store hold ups, but when a botched kidnapping turns deadly Frank is quickly eaten alive by the guilt. To make matters even worse a local newspaper man has whipped the local citizens up into a frenzy of bloodthirsty vigilantism.

It's a shame this movie is so hard to find, because even though the newspaper moments drag and are bogged down in simplistic social commentary, the rest of the film moves along smoothly and the ending was quite a shocker! Frank Lovejoy does a great job of portraying somebody riddled with guilt and Lloyd Bridges is scary as the balls to the wall criminal who will stop at nothing to get money.

Not the greatest noir that ever did noir, but it's a good watch.