Yellowstone Kelly (1959)

So much average

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A real B movie Western that's showing its age. Of course it wasn't unusual during the genre's heyday to find white actors playing Native Americans or to find story lines that portrayed them as duplicitous savages, but the breathtaking racism of this script, coupled with some hilarious casting, with a quite obviously blue-eyed white guy as the Sioux chief, makes it a pretty challenging watch for a modern audience.Some nice cinematography and decent enough fight scenes are mildly diverting, but it's certainly not a classic of the genre. More, it's a reminder of how, at worst, the Western was a pretty ruthless exercise in historical revisionism.

When the Clint Walker westerns showed up in the late fifties, they had to compete with the traditional actors like John Wayne, James Stewart, Randolph Scott, Audie Murphy, etc... No doubt it was hard to be a newcomer, with those guys there. That's why I missed his films, but the long wait gave me the thrill of seeing "Yellowstone Kelly" now, when westerns are so few, and we have seen most of the old ones. An unpretentious film, but with a top director, Gordon Douglas, an excellent script by Burt Kennedy, good actors like Edd Byrnes, Ray Danton, Andra Martin, Claude Atkins, and a great performance by John Russel as the chief Gall. It is a plain western story, with a sensual romance between Clint and Andra Martin, where they barely touch each other, but Wahleeah (Andra Martin) is very specific about " who looked at her" and "who she looked at" (guess!). The scenery, the music, and the action scenes, also help to place what would otherwise be a conventional routine western, one step higher.

Yellowstone Kelly is directed by Gordon Douglas and adapted to screenplay by Burt Kennedy from the Clay Fisher (AKA: Heck Allen) book of the same name. It stars Clint Walker, Edd Byrnes, John Russell, Ray Danton, Claude Akins, Andra Martin and Rhodes Reason. A Technicolor production filmed out of Sedona and Coconino National Forest in Arizona, with music by Howard Jackson and cinematography by Carl Guthrie."The West was opened by courageous trail-blazing pioneers like Lewis and Clark and Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly - - trapper, surveyor, and Indian scout who was the first frontiersman to cross the mighty Yellowstone Valley."A very well made Western, one that features some quite breath taking scenery captured by Carl Guthrie (Fort Massacre/Gunfight At Dodge City), Yellowstone Kelly falls into the category of straight conventional Oaters.Story concerns fabled fur trapper Luther Kelly (Walker), who having saved the life of a Sioux chief (Russell) is allowed to move freely in the Sioux territories. However, he finds himself piggy in the middle when the oafish US Cavalry move in to shake their might at the Native Americans. Things are further complicated when he is forced to save the life of an Arapaho woman (Martin), who subsequently runs away from the Sioux's to seek shelter with Kelly and his newly acquired companion, greenhorn Anse Harper (Byrnes). With potential love in the air putting another problem into the equation, Kelly has much to carry on his mightily broad shoulders.Originally slated to be a John Ford/John Wayne production (they decided to make The Horse Soldiers instead), Yellowstone Kelly is pretty much what it appears to be, that of a vehicle built around Walker as a device to push him forward as a lead actor. Unfortunately, in spite of his massive screen presence, Walker just didn't have the acting chops to be a grade "A" lead off man in film. Yet he was always watchable and engaging, such is the case here. The character of Kelly is interesting and around Walker are a number of TV stars and contract players to ensure there's a professional polish to the production.There's no surprises in store or deep psychological stirrings, though one extended sequence of Walker and Byrnes shacked up in a log cabin is open to homo-erotic interpretation, and the host of white actors playing Native Americans will irritate some, but this moves along at a good clip and makes for a fun afternoon viewing experience. 6.5/10

Yellowstone Kelly was a super show, I really liked the actors in the movie and I have always liked Clint Walker. I have always wished I could find a DVD or VHS copy of the particular movie but I have not found one yet. There are just no words that I can use to describe what this movie meant to me. I will always remember it. Thank you for letting give my opinion on this, means a lot to me. Clint Walker, Ed Byrnes, John Russell were some of my favorite actors back when this was made. Yellowstone Kelly was so great in the acting, in the scenery where it was made. The actors gave great performances dealing with Indian culture and things of this sort. It was just one of my favorite movies.