4/10
Feudin' Mountain Families Go West.
21 July 2004
The Haydens and Colbys are two mountain families who've had such a long term feud, everyone's forgotten what it started over. Never mind when Pop Colby (Noah Beery, Sr.) shoots Grandpa down in cold blood, Dad Hayden takes an unorthodox and cowardly approach in some eyes, he calls in the law.

The Haydens move west and Colby when he gets out of the joint takes the family and moves to where the Haydens are to take up where they left off. Along the way he has an ally, Jack LaRue, who has an agenda all his own.

Of course in Romeo&Juliet fashion, the Hayden son (Randolph Scott) and the Colby daughter(Esther Ralston} meet and flip for each other. If anything that throws gasoline on the feud fire.

This is one of the weakest of Randolph Scott's earlier westerns. I'm not sure if I'm seeing the complete film as a budget video company put out a re-release that looks like it was choppily edited. There are a lot of plot gaps and things that don't make sense.

This is also one of the earliest films of Shirley Temple who's big scene is when one of the Colbys shoots the head off of her doll. It wasn't for sadistic purposes but to get the Haydens to chase them. Still it's an earlier weepy for Shirley. She later did two more films with

Randolph Scott, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Susannah of the Mounties and with her name above his at that point.

Also at the very end, the fadeout is Esther and Randy in what looks like a photograph of later domestic bliss. And the soundtrack was blaring the Bing Crosby hit Please. Kind of out of place, but since Paramount had the rights to it, they figured they had to use it.
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