The Topeka Terror (1945)
The Topeka Terror is a western film of 1945 directed by Howard Bretherton. The land-rush opening of the Cherokee Strip brings in its wake a scattering of outlaws and claim jumpers. Among these is a crooked promoter. Trent Parker (Frank Jacquet), and his henchmen who plan a huge swindle by compiling falsified reports, putting the claims of honest settlers into the names of various henchmen. Clay Stevens (Allan Lane), a government agent posing as a drifting cowhand, advises the settlers to organize their resistance. Ben Jode (Roy Barcroft), the gang leader, runs for sheriff so he can gain full control of the town.
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Too much of everything
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Allan Lane plays a roving cowboy who seems to know an awful lot about the law regarding land claims in Topeka Terror. That knowledge is going to come in handy when he helps a bunch of settlers being swindled during the Oklahoma land rush of 1889. That is after he saves Tom London and his daughter and Twinkle Watts from a runaway team of horses.Perennial Republic villain Roy Barcroft is on hand and I have to say his villainy reaches some new heights. Give the man credit where credit is due, he's got one great scheme to accomplish claim jumping on a truly large scale.Stealing the film in whatever scene he's in is Earle Hodgins playing a dude lawyer who likes to doubletalk in legalese. Nice Republic western for Allan Lane.
It's not surprising that this film doesn't have any other reviewers on this board; I only caught it by chance on Encore Westerns this morning. It's one of hundreds churned out by Republic Studios back in the day, this one featuring Allan 'Rocky' Lane as "The Topeka Terror". The story follows the famous Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, and more specifically, the territory known as the Cherokee Strip. A pair of land swindlers (Roy Barcroft and Bud Geary) lure land agent Parker (Frank Jaquet) into their scheme to pay off his gambling debts, and it's up to Chad Stevens (Lane) to smoke out the bad guys and make the save for the new homesteaders.A lot of what keeps the story moving is the comedic dialog provided by Don Quixote 'Ipso Facto' Martingale, portrayed by veteran Earle Hodgins. As an attorney accompanying the settlers, he amuses and confounds with speech peppered with nonsense like habeus corpuscles and nully contenders. The best way to describe him would be like watching Pat Brady on speed.I'm not so sure the bad guys could really have pulled off a ruse like the one tried in this picture. Agent Parker would record the names of homesteaders making their land claims in the morning, and then fail to recognize those same folks later in the day after he replaced the record book with a phony one. Let's just say it took a major suspension of disbelief in order to make these stories work back in the Forties.Not to worry though, Chad Stevens has it all figured out, and reveals at the finale that he's actually an investigator for the U.S. Land Office. Everyone rightfully gets their claims back, and he heads off into the sunset to take on his next 'pro tem' assignment.