Oath of Vengeance (1944)

So much average

Just perfect...

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Fuzzy(Al St. John) is unusually useless to Billy Carson in this PRC film of the Billy the Kid series of B westerns. After demonstrating how not to tie down a calf, in a humorous scene, he decided to give up cow punching, and try his hand at running a general store. He discovered that this has its problems too. For one thing, he wasn't expecting the post office to be housed in his store. Among other things, he wasn't expecting to encounter the rat traps that the postmistress(Marin Sais, as Ma) set around her area. They had the occasional verbal fights. However, she was a physically strong woman, thus was useful in lifting heavy items that Fuzzy couldn't handle. Soon a physical fight between several men broke out in his store, and he got involved in trying to push them out to prevent destroying things. Bythe way,as a poor cowpoke, where did he get the money to start his store?? Perhaps he had saved some gold dust from a previous episode? Equally problematic was the fact that nearly all his customers were buying on credit, either because their cattle had been stolen or their crops weren't ready for harvest. This meant that Fuzzy had little cashflow to pay his supplier bills. If their crops failed, Fuzzy's store too would fail.........Meanwhile, when not standing around gabbing with Fuzzy, Billy is getting nosey about why cattle are disappearing, and why the ranchers and dirt farmers hate each other. The ranchers, such as Dale Kirby(Mady Lawrence) blame the farmers, without proof, because rustling seldom happened before they started showing up. Eventually, Billy figures out that the real rustlers are henchmen of the town money lender Steve Kinney(Jack Ingram). His scheme is to rustle some cattle, causing the rancher to come to him for money to make up the loss. He would put a lien on their property, and eventually he would foreclose on their property. (What scheme he had to make the dirt farmers lose their crops is not dealt with). This is a familiar plot in this film series...... Rancher Dale Kirby is incensed by Billy's persistent delving into the question of who is actually doing the rustling, and how to eliminate the animosity between the ranchers and farmers. She is sure who is doing the rustling, although they haven't been caught red handed. It's never established why Steve Kinney started his rustling when the dirt farmers began showing up. Perhaps he felt he needed them as a scapegoat. Or perhaps he didn't arrive in town until they did?........Farmer Dan Harper(Karl Hackett) is arrested on suspicion of rustling cattle, without proof. and put in jail. Steve and chief henchman Mort(Charles King) decide to break Dan out of jail. They hope the farmers will think the ranchers did it to possibly lynch him, while the ranchers will think the farmers did it to free their fellow farmer. This is, in fact , what happens. Meanwhile, Billy goes looking for where they took Dan. He meets one of Steve's men on the trail and bullies him into telling where Dan is being kept. Upon arriving at the old miner's shack, Billy burst through the door, ready for a fist fight, but not ready for a gun response. He lucked out, and beat up Mort and another henchman((John Caron, as Bart) who was recuperating from a bullet wound. He untied Dan and took him to town(along with 3 other riders whose identities I'm not sure of, but probably included Mort and Bart). Seeing Dan diffused the immediate problem that the ranchers were about to attack a group of farmers outside of Fuzzy's store. Sizing up the situation, Steve prepared to leave town, stuffing his money and lending notes in a bag, but running into Billy at the door. Time for the formulistic fight to the finish, then time for Dale to apologize to Billy for being so unappreciative.....The main plus for this film is Fuzzy's more than usual antics. The story is very familiar to anyone who has seen a few films in this series, and leaves a number of loose ends.

"Oath of Vengeance" - Wow, sounds like a Van Damme or Seagal flick from the Nineties. What you have instead though is one of the more routine B oaters to come out of the era with a town boss pitting cattlemen against homesteaders and reaping the reward by victimizing both sides. The picture opens on a comical note as Fuzzy Jones (Fuzzy St. John) wrestles a calf and comes out on the short end while his partner Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) laughingly takes it all in stride.Actually, Fuzzy has a pretty good share of screen time in this one, one of the principal elements of the story has him operating a general store. This wouldn't have been so bad, Fuzzy had his concept of capitalism down pretty well - buy low and sell for more. The problem however was that all the local nesters had to wait for their crops to come in before they had any money, so all of Fuzzy's merchandise left the store on credit.Having performed in his share of these programmers before, Carson knew he just needed to bide his time before smoking out Steve Kinney (Jack Ingram) as the villain of the piece. Kinney's bunch included perennial baddies Charles King as his partner Mort and Kermit Maynard as a henchman named Red. In a somewhat uncharacteristic turn for a B Western, the female lead portrayed by Mady Laurence was unusually hostile to the film's hero in her role as head of the Kirby outfit. The credits here on IMDb state her first name was Dale but I didn't hear her called by name during the story.So without a romantic angle between the principals to fall back on, that chore fell to the postmistress (Marin Sais) who supervised a small operation in Fuzzy's store. With a keen eye on Fuzzy's antics throughout the story, she was all ready to offer a marriage proposal by the end of the picture. To his great consternation, Fuzzy made it real clear that this was one time he wasn't going postal.

Average PRC Billy Carson western in which Al St John buys a store in cattlewoman versus nester country. The cattlewoman is played, none too attractively, by Mady Lawrence and the chief nester by Karl Hackett, a not particularly dynamic sample of the breed. Still it's always nice to see such old friends as those partners in villainy, Jack Ingram and Charles King (with both of whom Buster has the customary fist tussle, though Jack's role is mainly confined to registering reaction shots). Buster also has two tussles with our old friend, Kermit Maynard (in the first of which Maynard is partnered by another old buddy, Al Ferguson). Marin Sais figures in some comic encounters with Fuzzy who is at his acrobatic best (or worst if you prefer it that way). The direction of Sigmund Neufeld is no more desultory than usual, the photography is its usual flat and washed-out, and the musical background contains all the familiar stand-bys of this series, including "Home On the Range" played jerkily underneath the typical forties-style credits. Mr. Crabbe is his usual self. The dialogue is as clichéd as all get- out and the plot is as familiar as beef on the hoof (only of course we don't see any beef in this film — or cabbages either for that matter — we just have to take their word for it that they are ranchers and nesters). We are so used to this series now that we don't get very excited at the prospect of a big shoot-em-out climax for we know Buster is going to arrive in time to prevent it. He does!

Buster Crabbe and Al St. John find themselves in the middle of an arranged range war in Oath Of Vengeance. Everybody is swearing blood oaths in this one. It's homesteaders versus cowboys here.Of course in reality the whole thing is being arranged with a series of well planned incidents by villain Jack Ingram. He's looking to pick up some cheap land and this plot has been used a gazillion times in westerns both A and B.Al St. John going under the name Fuzzy in most films had a remarkable rubber face that he could contort into all kinds of funny expressions. Note when Crabbe is having his climatic fight with Ingram, St. John puts a kind of minor key climax to the whole affair. The expression afterward is priceless.No new trails blazed in