The Night Riders (1939)

An Exercise In Nonsense

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Talbot Pierce, a notorious card shark, is thrown from a riverboat and washes on shore at an inn which also houses a forger Hazelton. Hazelton has the idea of using a forged Spanish land grant that would say Don Luis de Serrano (Pierce) would own 13 million acres of land in Arizona. The courts decide it is authentic and Don Luis takes over the land and charges high taxes, cattle tolls, and rent for his land, and then evicts them after he taken everything they have including the 3M ranch. Stony, Tucson, and Lullaby decide to strike against Don Luis by riding as white robed vigilantes Los Capaqueroes, where they hold up Don Luis' tax collectors and give the money to the next person to be evicted from the valley. While this causes confusion, the Three Mesquiteers lack the evidence that will cause an investigation. They decide to take jobs from Don Luis as hunters for Los Capaqueroes, but Stony recognizes Don Luis as Pierce, but it is too late as our heroes are discovered to be the vigilantes and sentenced to be shot. Decent B western, but nothing really new and exciting considering there was never any chemistry between Wayne and Corrigan & Terhune and it shows here. I do like the Los Capaqueroes idea but the film lacks much action and the resolution to the film is sort of a downer. Remade w/ Don Barry as Arizona Raiders and again (loosely) w/ Vincent Price in the Baron of Arizona. Rating, based on B westerns, 6.

I'm not really a fan of the old western - "B" film programmers like THE NIGHT RIDERS, but word of the reappearance of this film on television (from a friend who talked about it with me), raised my curiosity a little about it. Despite the appearance of John Wayne (who handles his "Three Meskeeter" role of "Stony" very well) and noting Ray "Crash" Corrigan's appearance in it as well, the film did not really thrill me.I suppose for a late Depression audience it was exciting enough. And they were not too bothered by historical mistakes that only people like me think about. Wayne, by the way, has one moment which I really did like. Pretending to be one of the bad guys he bullies the heroine (whom he really likes), and so disillusions her son that the boy silently pursues Wayne and his evil associates for awhile. There is also a showboat Captain later on, supposedly giving another character some vital information, who starts reminiscing about his own brilliant performance in Macbeth - a nice brief piece of ham that was welcome.The plot has a Spanish land grant upsetting the claims of hundreds of settlers in a southwestern territory. An aristocratic Mexican, Don Luis de Serrano (George Douglas) is making the claim, and apparently has the backing of the Government in enforcing them. He is backed by an adviser named Hazleton (Walter Wills), and they have even gotten a body of evil - doers as a private army. Those are the "Nightriders" of the plot.SPOILER COMING UP: Hazleton is a forger, and the scheme is a clever forgery of his. Don Luis is an actor named Talbot Pierce, who has a criminal record. This does not come out until the conclusion.Now, although it is not quite the same thing, the plot of Hazleton and Pierce is a rip-off of the plot of James Addison Reavis who tried to use forged land grants (and brilliantly forged ones they were) to give his so-called aristocratic wife title to the territory of Arizona (the subject of THE BARON OF ARIZONA). Interesting variation.The Meskeeters stumble on a sleepy eyed President James Garfield (Francis Sayles), tells him what is going on - and get his okay to support them when they produce the evidence against "Don Luis". When they get it, Wayne's girlfriend (Ruth Randall) sends a message to Washington, D.C. But as it arrives we hear Garfield getting shot! As was pointed out before by another poster, Garfield did not have enough time in his Presidency to make a trip out west like this. His Presidency lasted six months . In that period Garfield had enough time to do the following: 1) Set up his cabinet and diplomatic corps.2) Send the name of Stanley Matthews to the Congress as choice for an empty seat on the U.S. Supreme Court - Matthews was confirmed.3) Start a government prosecution of certain leading Republicans, including former Senator Thomas Dorsey, in the "Star Route Postal Frauds". 4) Support Secretary of State James G. Blaine in prosecuting U.S. business claims to a set of islands off Chile and Bolivia (at the time Bolivia had a seacoast) that were rich in nitrates.5) Get into a messy conflict with New York State's senior Senator, Roscoe Conkling, regarding Federal control over the New York City Customs House and it's management. This was a continuation of a similar confrontation from the previous Hayes Administration.Most of these acts took up his attention from March 4, 1881 to July 2, 1881. Given that he was starting his administration, and the pace of government work was slower (far slower) in 1881 than today, all five items I mentioned fully took up Garfield's attention. On a personal note, his wife Lucretia (or "Crete" as she was nicknamed) was seriously ill in May - June 1881, and Garfield was monitoring her recovery.No time for long trips into the western regions here. A trip to Elberon, N.J. in September 1881 was a last ditch attempt by his doctors to save him by using the ozone of sea air at that New Jersey resort.Why did the script writers throw in that bit about Garfield? Well, historically the death of Garfield was during the days of the old west. It was rarely used as a movie subject (if you check this web site, putting "President James Garfield" down under "Characters", there are only five films). The closest film to dealing with Guiteau is a 1968 film. A spaghetti western made in 1970 had Van Johnson as Garfield, changed the local and entire story of the assassination.I suppose that the very obscurity of Garfield's brief term prevents it from getting the exposure that the Lincoln, Kennedy, King, and even the Huey Long Case get in our films. Garfield was a competent man, but had no real opportunity to show what he could do. The sordid nature of his shooting (Guiteau wanted an ambassadorship and was never really in the running for it) reduces this murder.The scriptwriters had some idea of the shooting - though we only hear the shots and don't see it. The telegraph operator tells the messenger boy that Garfield was going to Williams College that day (that is true - he was invited to give a speech there).It's obvious that the scriptwriters were stealing a bit from the Robert Taylor - Barbara Stanwyck film, THIS IS MY AFFAIR, made a few years earlier. Taylor is a special government operative sent by McKinley to infiltrate a counterfeiting gang, who is sentenced to death just at the time McKinley (his only contact) is killed. But that had a better script and better production values. This "B" feature had very little (aside from the Duke) to compare with it.

The value of this today can be found in two things: the action -- that is, the obligatory saloon brawl, shootouts and horseback chases are all competent, and are filmed competently.The writing: the writer places himself in this -- as 'the Forger'-- and through his 'writings' he pulls the villain's strings. The storytelling centers on the notion of changing identities -- Douglas playing an ex-con, who becomes a card shark, who assumes the mantle of 'the Don'. And the heroes play the 'three Mesquiteers', who assume the identities of the 'Capequeros', who assume the identities of henchmen, who assume the 'identities' of corpses. It all resolves when the 'true identities' are revealed, and the villain is forced to extricate himself out of his false exterior through 'writing'.On the whole, this is not a very good Western...the screenplay, acting and dialogue are horrible. Sherman has to get poor marks too, for giving all of this a pass. Ironically, it would take a Kurosawa to utilize Western themes and turn them into great storytelling, a la "Seven Samurai".When you watch this, you can see where ideas came from for such spoofs as "Blazing Saddles" and "Three Amigos!".

I imagine that Night Riders was probably done immediately after Stagecoach was finished shooting, but was not out yet. No one knew that it would be the film that would make John Wayne a huge star, so he was back doing the Three Mesquiteers western series for Republic Pictures. It is the film listed immediately after Stagecoach on IMDb and in the Films of John Wayne book.In this entry Wayne, Ray Corrigan, Max Terhune and a whole bunch of other honest folk are being tossed off their ranches by a man showing up with titles from an old Spanish land grant. The only problem here is that you're dealing with the Three Mesquiteers who ain't gonna take this lying down.The three of them, Duke included, decide to go Zorro on the bad guys. They dress up as three stylish bandits with caped hoods and call themselves, Los Capequeros. They rob the rent collectors from the "Don" and give it back to the ranchers. Even sheriff Kermit Maynard is sympathetic to them.What makes Night Riders interesting is the fact that the Three Mesquiteers go calling on President James A. Garfield who is making a goodwill trip out west. They are looking to elude the rent collectors and break in on President Garfield while he's reading in bed. Don't say much for Presidential security, but they put up their guns and Garfield doesn't give them away. And he offers to help if they can get the evidence after the Mesquiteers tell their tale.Of course Garfield never went west in the brief three months he had as President in 1881 before an assassin shot him in Washington's Union station. Oddly enough his successor Chester A. Arthur did make a trip west, a well publicized good will trip that was worked into the plot of the Robert Taylor western, Cattle King which I also reviewed. Garfield's shooting was worked in, albeit in a minor way, in the climax of Night Riders.The Garfield connection does make Night Riders somewhat interesting to watch. And the Three Mesquiteer films were a bit above average of the ordinary B picture westerns of the time.I hope no one sees that title and assumes some cartoon cat guest starred with the Duke in one of his films.