Frontier Fugitives (1945) User Reviews (7)

PRC's Texas Rangers Ride Again

[krorie · 5/10 · 18 September 2005]

The popularity of Republic's Three Mesquiteers series prodded the other Hollywood studios cranking out Saturday matinée westerns to respond in kind. Based on William Colt MacDonald's novels which in turn gave a cowboy setting to Alexandre Dumas' classic Three Musketeers, The Texas Rangers had three gun totting rangers who usually worked undercover as in this outing. The combination tried to include a lover, a gunfighter, and a comic. In this final version of the Texas Rangers, the versatility and charisma of the three leads make for a winning combination. Dave "Tex" O'Brien who gained fame by playing Captain Midnight, was just right for the role of Texas Ranger Dave Wyatt. He later starred in the Pete Smith specials and won an Emmy for his writing for the Red Skelton TV show. In "Frontier Fugitives," he is in hot pursuit of stolen furs. The love interest is provided by Lorraine Miller who plays the daughter of the man killed for his furs. But the romance doesn't really get off the ground. Tex Ritter, my favorite western hero, had the best singing voice of any of the singing cowboys and became a successful Nashville entertainer. He sold more records than any other singing cowboy besides Gene Autry. Tex gets to pick and sing in "Frontier Fugitives." He is undercover and says he wants to try out one of the guitars hanging on the wall where the fur thieves hang out. College educated, Tex was also a folklorist and interpreter of traditional Texas folk music.

The third ranger, Guy Wilkerson, aka Panhandle Perkins, did much of the comedy, but one thing I like about this series, especially after Tex Ritter replaced Jim Newill, is that the comic relief is shared by the entire cast, including the outlaws. "Frontier Fugitives" even gives the normally sombre I. Stanford Jolley a chance to strut his stuff. He pretends to be an Indian and clowns around with Panhandle who is also pretending to be an Indian. In the process Stanford Jolley gets his smoke laced with wacky weed. A stoned Jolley tries to find his way back to his cronies in town. Perhaps this idea came from Dave O'Brien who had earlier played in "Reefer Madness." Since not only Guy Wilkerson but also Tex Ritter and Dave O'Brien were quite adept at doing comedy, at times the Texas Rangers series play almost as comic westerns, even a bit of satire is thrown in from time to time. One reason for this is possibly the low-budget with which the actors were made to work. All the fun distracted from the cheap sets and weak scripts.

The viewer gets action, humor, and songs performed by a master showman. Not bad for a 57 minute oater.

Average Oater with Tex Ritter and Dave O'Brien

[zardoz-13 · 5/10 · 4 June 2012]

"Brand of the Devil" director Harry L. Fraser and scenarist Elmer Clifton have contrived another uninspired but tolerable, B-movie western featuring the three Texas Rangers. If your counting, this is the second to last entry in the PRC studio's franchise. "Frontier Fugitive" pits Tex Haines (Tex Ritter), Dave Wyatt (Dave O'Brien) and Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkerson) against a trigger happy quartet of villains who are trying to steal a treasure trove of furs that belong to Old Man Williams. The action opens with the villains disguised as Native Americans blasting away at the cabin where Old Man Williams lives. Before he dies, Williams stashes the location of his furs in a wild cat fur. The villains are scared off by Tex who investigates the cabin and finds Old Man Williams' body. Meantime, Old Man Williams' beautiful daughter Ellen (Lorraine Miller of "The White Gorilla") rides up and watches. No sooner has she ridden up than another man, who calls himself the local Indian agent, Allen Fain (Jack Ingram), gets the jump on Tex. He disarms Tex and takes him into custody. Fain believes that Tex shot and killed Old Man Williams. About that time, Dave rides up and finds Fain and Tex in the cabin. Eventually, all three ride back into town. As it turns out, the owner of the local trading post, Jim Gar (Jack Hendricks), is the chief villain. They are trying to find Old Man Williams' stash of furs. Tex allows himself to be put in jail because he knows the man masquerading as Fain is not Fain.

The best scene is this tongue-in-cheek oater occurs when Panhandle dresses up like an Indian and the villainous Frank Sneed (I. Stanford Jolley of "Brand of the Devil") slips into a similar outfit. They end up at the same cabin and share a peace pipe. Panhandle stuffs something else in the peace pipe and Sneed goes bonkers after he smokes it. Later, Dave gets out of jail after Tex does and they look after Ellen's best interests.

Clocking in at bare minimum 57 minutes, "Frontier Fugitives" isn't as much fun good as "Brand of the Devil." The villains are an ordinary bunch of sidewinders and they don't do anything surprising. In fact, nothing surprising happens in this shallow horse opera. The cast is better than the material, and Tex warbles two tunes: "Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry" and "I'll Wait for You, Dear." You have to be a fan of the PRC "Texas Rangers" franchise to appreciate this low-budget run of the mill horse opera.

"Me heap big Indian Chief, make Pow-Wow!"

[classicsoncall · 4/10 · 5 October 2007]

If Richard Simmons had been part of the cast, this could have easily passed for an extended episode of 'Sergeant Preston of the Yukon', the Alaskan style TV Western of the late 1950's. The story dealt with a quartet of villains after a cache of valuable animal furs, but manages to sidetrack into a badly cliché ridden exercise in just about every imaginable Native American stereotype one can think of. Maintaining balance, Texas Ranger Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkerson) trades Hows!, Ughs!, war whoops and a smoking of the peace pipe with I. Stanford Jolley, one of the bad guy henchmen in an embarrassing display of Indian caricature, which if made today would be greeted by swarms of boycotting protesters on line at the theater.

The story only gets slightly better from there, as fellow rangers Tex Ritter and Dave O'Brien keep Panhandle in line long enough to finger the bad guys and come to the aid of Miss Ellen Williams (Lorraine Miller), daughter of the fur trader who meets his demise earlier in the picture. There are a few anomalies along the way; for example, when Tex is falsely arrested, where does he get the guitar to strum a melody while stuck in the calaboose? And say, when the phony Indian (Jolley) convinces Miss Williams to go out to her father's cabin, how is it they wind up back at the Bear Settlement general store? Speaking of which, I can't think of another Western that features as many wide missing punches as thrown in the scuffle there.

That this was a Public Releasing Corporation picture explains a lot as far as production values and short cuts in execution go. The Texas Rangers were PRC's answer to Republic's 'Three Mesquiteers' series, after a six film failed attempt with a mediocre 'Frontier Marshals' series. The original Rangers included James Newill, O'Brien and Wilkerson, with Ritter replacing Newill after fourteen pictures. Ritter had already achieved genuine stardom with pictures for Grand National, Monogram, Columbia and Universal. Tex and his trusty horse White Flash signed on for eight pictures, lending a much needed boost to the mix, but they weren't enough to compensate for the shoestring budgets and shoddy production values. It shows even more now than back in the day, but that of course, depending on your point of view, is part of the fun.

The Cast Deserves Better

[dougdoepke · 7 October 2015]

There's the expected matinée action, mostly hard riding through LA area scrublands, some flying fists not too well staged, and some fast shooting to wind up the storyline. Nothing special here, despite the appealing team of Ritter, O'Brien, and comedy relief Wilkerson. And, oh yes, there're premier bad guys with dueling moustaches, Jolley and Ingram, along with some suspicious tobacco that turns Jolley into a wobbly bobble-head. Seems the baddies are after a hidden cache of valuable furs and a number of shenanigans follow as Rangers O'Brien and Ritter pick up the trail. The comedy relief, however, would never fly today as Wilkerson and Jolley mock it up as clownish moustachioed Indians! Even if nothing more than a programmer, the story's too slack and meandering to be anything more than a time-passer. Ritter's tuneful warbling may actually be the movie's real highlight. All in all, I think the cast deserved better, even from lowly PRC.

Fur Heist

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 18 March 2014]

Tex Ritter, Dave O'Brien and Guy Wilkerson are once again The Texas Rangers both in occupation and as regulars of PRC Texas Ranger series. With budgets so minuscule that they were paid out of petty cash, the guys are sent in Frontier Fugitives after a gang that's killing both Indians and whites and the Indians could go on the warpath again.

We never see any Indians in Frontier Fugitive, but we do see some white people dressed like Indians and they're after one particular trapper who has hidden a cache of furs somewhere that the bad guys would like to heist. The late trapper left a written message for his daughter that we spend most of the movie trying to find.

This series was the poor relation of Republic's Three Mesquiteers or Monogram's Range Busters. Tex Ritter sings a bit and there's some good action for western fans, but this is nothing to write home about.

Again With The Random Titles

[boblipton · 4/10 · 16 March 2023]

Texas Rangers Tex Ritter, Dave O'Brien and comic relief Guy Wilkerson are riding towards Indian territory, but get caught up in an entirely different matter. George Morrell is killed by a gang who want his valuable furs. He has hidden them, so it's a race between the bad guys and the Rangers, helping out Morrell's daughter, Lorraine Miller.

It's an interesting if minor variation on the 'save the ranch' plot, but in the hands of director Harry L. Fraser, about six minutes of story, six of Ritter singing, six of riding around Corriganville and shooting at one another, and another six of Wilkerson's now-unfashionable clowning -- he disguises himself as an Indian who talks with many "ugh"s -- are eked out to 57 minutes. Writer Elmer Clifton might have put in a few red herrings, but he knew who he was working for, so we have to watch people ride in, hitch their horses, walk to the front door, enter, then switch to inside until they do what they came to do a couple of minutes earlier. Fraser's continued employment, even at end-of-the-road PRC remains a mystery to me. Perhaps he was paying them.

Poverty Row Studios

[JoeB131 · 4/10 · 16 August 2014]

Before there was YouTube fan films, before there was direct to video, even before there was Grindhouse, there was Poverty Row. Cheaply made productions cranked out in a week by actors working for little money, and lots of filler to get to a minimum running time.

So this movie follows the hijinks of three Texas Rangers working in Indian Territory, trying to find out who is killing people to steal furs. And we could probably leave it at that, if it weren't for the racism.

The movie contains scenes where various white characters masquerade as native Americans, and engage in some of the most awful stereotyping one could imagine. The kind of thing that would get massive protests today, and rightfully so.

Oh, yeah. Tex Ritter sings.