Professor Blackstone’s medicine show – including a trick shooter and an “Indian Princess” – descends upon Deadwood mining camp. The local crime boss, a saloon-keeper who doesn’t wake up until early evening, is less than pleased when the trick shooter gets embroiled in a shootout with some of his henchmen. And there is a local newspaper with a high-fallutin’ editor…
Sadly, nobody calls anybody else a cocksucker.
Bad Man Of Deadwood, obviously shot on back lots in Southern California (possibly near Pioneertown, some of the rocky canyon/exterior sequences [editor's note: Pioneertown was built five years later -Annika]) is a pure Oater – a term once used by the trade magazines to refer to any and all Western-themed product, but now relegated to the “harmless” era of Singing Cowboys, white hats and black hats, and evil money-grubbers trying to cheat hard-workin’ folk out of their land claims…
Roy Rogers, who was sometimes billed as “King of the Cowboys”, plays trick-shooter/crooner Bill Brady, our Hero (who actually switches from a black hat to a white hat in order to “fool them fellas that shot at me,” though it sadly doesn’t work). He has a mysterious past as a gun-hand named Brett Starr, which doesn’t really payoff other than as back story. I think that was thrown in so that the kids in the matinee audience could nod sagely at each other in their Davy Crockett coonskin caps and corduroy jackets and say “See? Roy Rogers is the best, he used to be Brett Starr but now he’s Bill Brady”.
And Roy pretty much was one of the rootin’est, tootin’est cowboys in the wild, wild west of the 30’s and 40’s. He took the crown of the primo Singing Cowboy from Gene Autry when Autry went off to war (the two men had worked together but ended up as professional rivals post WWII) – and while Gene has a much more successful recording/songwriting career, Roy gave all us East Coasters lots of good fried chicken and cheeseburgers… and Roy was more good lookin’. He had an easy charm to him. (Incidentally, contemporary actor Chris Mulkey – remember Hank Jennings from Twin Peaks? – looks eerily like Roy.)
Movies like this are pure fluff, usually coming in at less than an hour, with a pretty standard formula and stock characters- but they can be a lot of fun. I’ve never been a huge fan of the simplistic “Cowboy Code” morality movies, but I enjoy them for what they are. The good guys win, the bad guys loose, Roy sings a song or two, Gabby gets all flustered and says “Consarn it!” or the like… it’s an Oater. Which is what it should be!
