The Lonesome Trail Double Feature (1955 with The
Silver Star)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: C+ Films: C+/C
Director
Richard Bartlett and Producer/Actor Earle Lyon made three Westerns for Lippert
Productions, with two of them now issued by VCI as The Lonesome Trail Double Feature.
Though unrelated except by genre, The
Silver Star was also released in 1955 and prove to be two of the better
B-Westerns of the era at a time when theaters and TV were glutted with them.
Lonesome Trail has a soldier coming home to
fight a thieving land baron using a group with strong arm tactics to take
anything and everything they want.
Johnny (John Agar) is that soldier with a singular sense of what is
right. Usually, the formula would
dictate that he would be the best gun in the West and mayhem would ensue. However, when his shooting hand is damaged,
he takes up bow & arrow (read “Indian weapons”) and goes after the baron
(Wayne Morris). It is a great idea, but
the film does not realize it all the way through in its screenplay co-written
by Bartlett and Ian McDonald from Gordon Shirreeffs’ book Silent Reckoning. Wonder if
the book did?
The Silver Star also wants to twist the Western,
making the High Noon scenario a
priority where the Sheriff (Earle Lyon) has even more doubt than Gary
Cooper. Certainly not a film that would
settle well with the makers of Rio Bravo,
the film once again has its moments, but never seems to amount to all it could
and a low budget is not the only reason.
Lon Chaney Jr. and Edgar Buchanan also star.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on both films were shot by
Cinematographer Guy Roe in black & white and has fairly good Grey Scale and
Video Black, if not spectacular. Detail
is again an issue, but it is watchable enough thanks to VCI’s restoration
efforts. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is
more strident and broken up than expected, down a few generations from whatever
the original audio was. Extras include
Lyon commenting on each film, plus bios, stills and trivia for each film and
bio/filmography on Lyon.
- Nicholas Sheffo
