Freaktana A Major Disappointment

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

dougdoepke A film crew gets mixed up with a ranch's dishonest foreman and his conniving mastermind.This oater has one of the darndest scenes of any horse opera I've seen. A movie crew is out in the middle of nowhere shooting a cowboy scene. Except it's not out in the middle of nowhere when a sudden parade of cross-country runners run through the setup. They come out of nowhere, and abruptly the illusion is shattered. More tellingly, it shows how much of an illusion those old matinees were for front row kids like myself.Minimize the boilerplate plot. Instead, it's really fun watching the film crew go through the movie-making motions. As others point out, it's a movie within a movie. And catch Miss Westinghouse herself, Betty Furness, as the actress. I almost thought I was watching one of those old 50's game shows. Also, there's Lon Chaney Jr. while he was still young and strapping. Anyway, it's a fun movie, at least in my little book. And if I'm not mistaken, those rock slabs are Vasquez Rocks just a few miles north of LA. So the crew didn't have to go far, after all.A "7" on the matinée scale.

kidboots Dorothy Wilson was a charmingly natural actress who started her career as a "secretary to the stars". Her boss, director Gregory La Cava organised a screen test and she was on her way. Even the Westerns she appeared in were among the more memorable and quirky.Around the mid thirties, an entertaining Western spin off series came about - the making of Western movies ("The Cowboy Star", "Hollywood Cowboy") often combining real cowboys with "reel" cowboys. Tom Keene was RKO's Western star (they were the only major studio with a regular "B" Western schedule) so he fitted in right at home in "Scarlet River" as a Hollywood cowboy who was more than a match for the real McCoy!!! The film is a real delight as an intrepid group of movie makers try to film a western but civilization keeps getting in the way - the wagon train breaks down, the settlers are done for - suddenly an estate agent's bus pulls up, they try to film in front of a lonely mountain hut but it is being converted into a Southern Fried Chicken Restaurant and in the middle of a love scene they are invaded by a cross country marathon ("say "52" looks kinda cute"). Where can the company go to get away from modern life. They find the perfect place - "Scarlet River Ranch" - but the ranch is falling on hard times. The bank is foreclosing on the mortgage - ranch hand Ulysses (Roscoe Ates) is too busy sending in movie scripts to attend to ranch business. His latest plot is about a crooked foreman who is robbing the girl he is working for!!! He doesn't realise how close to home he is - but the foreman does!! Jeff (Creighton Chaney, before he became Lon Chaney Jnr.) is in cahoots with an agent and is trying to force Judy, the owner, off the ranch. Dorothy Wilson is such a peach as Judy, it was very unfortunate that she didn't have a bigger career. The motion picture company is a welcome relief - Judy will now have the money for the next payment. After the first day, Tom is taken for a tour of the ranch and starts putting two and two together as far as Jeff, the foreman is concerned - there have been too many odd accidents - hay ricks catching fire in the middle of the night, drinking water being mysteriously poisoned so the cattle have to be shot. In addition he is disgusted at Jeff's influence over Judy's little brother, Buck (Billy Butts), who has been taught to smoke and lie!!! Buck soon comes to his senses and, together with Tom, sets out to rescue Judy, who has been kidnapped. There is more action in this film than in a whole swag of Westerns as Tom Keene (with a lot of help from Yakima Canutt) does some fancy riding and stunts and shows "reel" cowboys are every bit as tough as the real thing. In addition to all this fun, you get a sneak peak at "stars at play" - okay, they are only in RKO's cafeteria but still you can see Myrna Loy (she flew in to RKO for a couple of pictures) sitting with Frances Dee (just a glimpse). Julie Haydon (a Ann Harding / Virginia Bruce lookalike), Bruce Cabot and Rochelle Hudson engage in small talk and Joel McCrea gets to tell a joke at the newstand.Highly Recommended.

howdymax Until this movie popped up on TCM, the only time I ever saw Tom Keane was in a commie propaganda movie from 1934 called "Our Daily Bread". I would never have remembered him in that except his overacting was so bad, it was hard to forget. I'm not much for Saturday am oaters, but when I saw his name, I thought it would be good for a laugh. I was really surprised.This was a movie in a movie. A notch up from the standard western programmers of the day. Tom plays a cowboy hero with a poverty row production company trying to find an isolated ranch to film their two reelers on. He's ably supported by Edgar Kennedy as the director, Betty Furness as his heroine, and Yakima Canutt as a stuntman. (Of course, everybody who knows anything about the genre, realizes that he was the ultimate western stuntman in real life.) They eventually find an isolated ranch outside LA only to get tangled up in a complicated land grab plot. The pretty owner is played by Dorothy Wilson who seems to have vanished from film history. The crooked foreman is played by Lon Chaney Jr in a very early role, and the comic relief is played by Roscoe Ates. I won't bother to outline the plot except to say that the hero saves the day.The surprise is that this was a thoroughly enjoyable movie. Tom Keane was likable and hardly overacted at all, the heroine and love interest were both lovely, and the contrast between make believe movie magic and what passed for real life was entertaining. One added bonus: I'm in the business myself, and the opportunity to see the primitive cameras, lights, and sound equipment was really amazing. They really had to work at it in those days. The boom mikes looked like telephone poles. The cameras were the size of dog houses. Humping that stuff around must have been murder. Watching the crew strut around in jodphurs, leather jackets and silk scarfs was a delight.All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Anybody interested in the nuts and bolts of film making should enjoy it as well.

Paul Curtis That's my favorite line from this adorable comedy-western. I liked the premise (cowboy movie people helping real ranchers with their problems) but wasn't expecting anything special...this was a surprise. The story is lively, the script is sharp, and Tom Keene is a hoot as the dumb-looking pretty-boy hero. I've seen few westerns (except post-"Support Your Local Sheriff" parodies) that acknowledge the too-good-looking ultra-wholesome hero but this one does it well.From now on I'm going to keep an eye out for screenwriter Harold Shumate, whose script delivers exactly what western-watchers of the time wanted, but adds plenty of funny lines and charming situations. I'm also going to take a little more care seeking out movies with Tom Keene, whose performance succeeds as a strong hero performance, but also self-parody as well. I hadn't recognized him as another goofball hero, Col. Tom Edwards in the classic badfilm "Plan 9 from Outer Space." I'm eager to find out if he played such quotably strange characters in other pics.