"Gung Ho!" director Ray Enright makes the Audie Murphy B-movie western "Kansas Raiders" look better than this Universal-International release has any right. Short, sweet, and simple, this wild and woolly saga about Jesse James' notorious exploits while riding alongside Quantrill's raiders during the Civil War exemplifies American history rewritten Hollywood style to heighten the drama. The film cover the entire time that Jesse and his band spent with Quantrill until the latter died at the hands of Union soldiers. For example, while older brother Frank is said to have participated in the Lawrence, Kansas raid, Jesse had not left his home at that point. "Winchester '73 scenarist Robert L. Richards has Jesse riding into the war earlier than he did. The cast that surrounds Murphy is a good one with Brian Donlevy cast as the infamous Quantrill, Scott Brady as 'Bloody' Bill Anderson, James Best as Cole Younger, Tony Curtis as Kit Dalton, Richard Long as Frank James, and Marguerite Chapman as Quantrill's woman.
"Kansas Raiders" opens with an exemplary montage that encapsulates the American Civil War. The narrator sounds appropriately glum. "For more than four long, bitter years this nation was torn by civil war, the bloodiest and most destructive in our history for it was a war of neighbor against neighbor, family against family, brother against brother, flag against flag. Nor was the slaughter confined to the armies of the North and South alone. This was a war that bred an outlaw army of guerrillas masquerading under the flags of both sides, pillaging, burning and killing for private gain. The most savage and merciless among the lawless tribes whose organized violence terrorized the county were the men who marched, raided, and killed under the ominous black flag of William Clark Quantrill." No sooner do Jesse (Audie Murphy), his brother Frank (Richard Long) and their close friends Kit Dalton (Tony Curtis), Cole Younger (James Best) and James Younger (Dewey Martin) ride into war-torn Kansas than a group of paranoid Red legs organize a mob to lynch them. Our heroes survive this lynch attempt in Lawrence, Kansas, through the intervention of a fair-minded Union Army Captain (Richard Arlen) who sees that Jesse and his comrades are turned loose. Although they told their captors that they had never seen Quantrill, the boys ride in search of Quantrill and stumble upon him accidentally when they save Kate Clarke (Marguerite Chapman of "Parachute Nurse") from a runaway team of horses. Jesse believes that Quantrill is a real fighting man but Kate does her best to change that faulty impression repeatedly throughout the film's nimble 80 minutes.
Nevertheless, Jesse stands up for Quantrill. "I don't like to stand by and see nobody blacken a man's name." Indeed, he feels this about Quantrill and he hasn't even met him. Quantrill is holding court when Jesse and company finally meet him. Quantrill executes several uniformed Union troops as spies. He takes a long, hard look at Jesse and his men and observes, "They look like good boys. Rode all the way from Missouri." Quantrill accepts them and sends one of his closest associates Rudolph Tate (David Wolfe of "Where The Sidewalk Ends") to provoke Jesse into a knife fight. They have to clench a handkerchief in their teeth and start slashing. Jesse triumphs over the bigger man and kills him. Interestingly, Jesse and company bury Tate. "Didn't look like any of his friends were going to bury him," they explain. Later, Jesse refuses to believe Kate when she assures him Quantrill ordered Tate to test him. Ironically, too, the man that Jesse kills—Tate—served as a Northern spy.
Robert L. Richards paints a despicable portrait of Quantrill as a murderer. Nevertheless, despite the evil that Quantrill and the James/Younger gang represent, each is depicted in ways that ennoble them. Margaret Chapman serves as the film's conscience. Jesse doesn't so much fall in love with her and come under her influence. Kate has a hard time trying to convince Jesse to leave Quantrill. Indeed, Quantrill does his best to hold onto Jesse and he gets our protagonist drunk while discussing strategy. Later, Jesse doesn't like what he sees Quantrill doing and refuses to ride with him on a raid. "I came here to fight. Came here straight from my home, what's left of it three weeks ago. That was the day Frank and me came home and found the house burning and my ma with her arm shot off, my pa hanging in a tree in the front yard. It was Redlegs, Yankee guerrillas. One of 'em drunk was still there. I come here because I wanted to kill every man I could ever find that would do a thing like that. Then we went out on that raid the other day. I found we were doin' the same thing. We was murderin' people that didn't have no chance. People just like my ma and pa. Maybe that's strategy, colonel, and maybe I don't understand it, but you don't need me for what you're going to do Later, Kate confides in Jesse, "Bloodshed and murder don't mean anything to Quantrill. It's all part of a dream, a dream of playing war. But the people he kills are real people." Quatrill is manipulative and mendacious. Jesse tries to reform him with limited results. Eventually, the war catches up with Quantrill and he disbands his guerrilla army. Jesse and company hang around with him and then Quantrill is blinded and our heroes have to hole up while Yankee swarm the territory. The Union Army catches them in a burned out shack and a blinded Quantrill tricks Jesse and his men into leaving him behind so that he can go out in a blaze of glory. Indeed, "Kansas Raiders" doesn't white-wash Quantrill, but it does white-wash Jesse James and his trigger-happy cohorts. Enright stages the battle scenes with efficiency and "Kansas Raiders" doesn't wear out its welcome.
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