I was interested that reviewer "earlytakie" commented on the use of Trucolor in this picture and grateful that it's been preserved. I second that. I have read that Trucolor was essentially Republic's name for Cinecolor, which I have found to generally awful, especially in its rendering of flesh tones. (For example, in the 1948 spy film Sofia--which I've also reviewed--it is annoying that the beautiful Patricia Morison is so unflatteringly photographed and appears to have a sickly, waxy complexion.) To return to the film at hand, I think the Trucolor here is very good, especially in scenes shot in the desert. If it is Cinecolor, then Republic's lab must have processed it in their own way, making distinctly better.
The picture is basically about two characters--a reformed gambler who has gotten religion and an angry young woman who masquerades as a male when performing as a bandit. Bill Elliot is a very low-key actor, who is a lot easier to take than many B-movie (or even A-movie) heroes, but he does get a little monotonous. As far the cross-dressing bandit: In 1908, Max Beerbohn, reviewing a production of Euripides's The Bacchae, in which a prominent actress of the day, Lillah McCarthy, played Dionysus, wrote in his review: "It is a dangerous thing for a woman to impersonate a man except in a Christmas pantomime." He thought Ms. McCarthy carried it off though. Similarly, when Marie Windsor plays a tough woman who masquerades as a tough male outlaw in the first 40 minutes of Hellfire, she is highly effective in the part, only not 100% convincing because of the womanly way she fills out her outlaw shirt.
At midpoint, when she shucks off her masculine guise and transforms into a sexy, genial but conventional saloon singer, the movie gets less interesting (though she is very appealing in her frilly costumes and flirts amusingly with sheriff Forrest Tucker). She has a great cynical line to Tucker, hinting at her past as a whore, "I've known a lot of men who were in love with their wives." A scene that is really worth waiting for comes toward the end, when she is in jail, lolling on her bunk hugging her rather oversized guitar--the most suggestive use of a musical instrument since Cary Grant played a saxophone in Once Upon a Honeymoon. I recommend this movie to all Marie Windsor fans (though from mid-point on rather deficient in action).
Incidentally, a few years later in the TV series Stories of the Century (produced by a Republic subsidiary), Ms. Windsor played the real-life outlaw Belle Starr, making her as ruthless and savage as could be imagined. She engages in a no-holds-barred, furniture-destroying battle with show's distinctly overmatched heroine (the bland Mary Castle), staged with his usual manic zest by William Witney. You have to see it to believe it. It's curious that this TV series, though obviously intended to appeal to "the whole family," was often (as here) more violent than anything you were likely to see in contemporary movies. It was even sometimes more sexy (as in the "Cattle Kate" episode, where Jean Parker plays a very lewd middle-aged outlaw) than anything in films at the time. It's a shame that the two leads, Jim Davis and Mary Castle, are not very interesting. (In the second season, Castle was replaced by the excellent Kristine Miller, a great improvement.) The show uses a lot of stock footage from old Republic films, judiciously cut in for the most part. An exception: at times when there is a scene in a modest smallish saloon, the film editor couldn't resist cutting in a laughably inappropriate extreme long shot of a huge saloon-cum-theater set packed with hundreds of extras watching six chorus girls dancing on stage. Maybe some kind of private joke.
The picture is basically about two characters--a reformed gambler who has gotten religion and an angry young woman who masquerades as a male when performing as a bandit. Bill Elliot is a very low-key actor, who is a lot easier to take than many B-movie (or even A-movie) heroes, but he does get a little monotonous. As far the cross-dressing bandit: In 1908, Max Beerbohn, reviewing a production of Euripides's The Bacchae, in which a prominent actress of the day, Lillah McCarthy, played Dionysus, wrote in his review: "It is a dangerous thing for a woman to impersonate a man except in a Christmas pantomime." He thought Ms. McCarthy carried it off though. Similarly, when Marie Windsor plays a tough woman who masquerades as a tough male outlaw in the first 40 minutes of Hellfire, she is highly effective in the part, only not 100% convincing because of the womanly way she fills out her outlaw shirt.
At midpoint, when she shucks off her masculine guise and transforms into a sexy, genial but conventional saloon singer, the movie gets less interesting (though she is very appealing in her frilly costumes and flirts amusingly with sheriff Forrest Tucker). She has a great cynical line to Tucker, hinting at her past as a whore, "I've known a lot of men who were in love with their wives." A scene that is really worth waiting for comes toward the end, when she is in jail, lolling on her bunk hugging her rather oversized guitar--the most suggestive use of a musical instrument since Cary Grant played a saxophone in Once Upon a Honeymoon. I recommend this movie to all Marie Windsor fans (though from mid-point on rather deficient in action).
Incidentally, a few years later in the TV series Stories of the Century (produced by a Republic subsidiary), Ms. Windsor played the real-life outlaw Belle Starr, making her as ruthless and savage as could be imagined. She engages in a no-holds-barred, furniture-destroying battle with show's distinctly overmatched heroine (the bland Mary Castle), staged with his usual manic zest by William Witney. You have to see it to believe it. It's curious that this TV series, though obviously intended to appeal to "the whole family," was often (as here) more violent than anything you were likely to see in contemporary movies. It was even sometimes more sexy (as in the "Cattle Kate" episode, where Jean Parker plays a very lewd middle-aged outlaw) than anything in films at the time. It's a shame that the two leads, Jim Davis and Mary Castle, are not very interesting. (In the second season, Castle was replaced by the excellent Kristine Miller, a great improvement.) The show uses a lot of stock footage from old Republic films, judiciously cut in for the most part. An exception: at times when there is a scene in a modest smallish saloon, the film editor couldn't resist cutting in a laughably inappropriate extreme long shot of a huge saloon-cum-theater set packed with hundreds of extras watching six chorus girls dancing on stage. Maybe some kind of private joke.