Cow Country (1953)

"Cow Country" has a good supporting cast of western veterans--Robert Lowery, James Millican, Robert J. Wilke, Robert Barrat, Peggie Castle, among others--a writer (Adele Buffington) who had been turning out western screenplays for years and a director (Lesley Selander) who specialized in making efficient, fast-paced westerns and did a lot of them, but they all must have had an off day because this is one of the slowest-moving, talkiest, cheapest-looking snorefests I've seen in a long time.

Star Edmond O'Brien must have been short on his mortgage payment when he agreed to make this, because that would be the only possible explanation for his being in it. It certainly couldn't have been the script, which is awful and sounds like Buffington slapped it together from pieces of the innumerable westerns she'd written before this. There's no connection at all among any of the characters in this film; everybody just seems to be standing around waiting for their cues so they can recite their lines. The few "action" scenes are very poorly done (Selander's action scenes were usually far, far better than what we see here). Production values are, to be charitable, minimal. even for Allied Artists. The film has the look of a particularly cheesy episode of the old "Lone Ranger" TV series.

As mentioned, even the good cast can't save this mess. O'Brien tries hard, and Wilke puts in his usual good job of villainy, but nothing really works. For some odd reason it was decided to make James Millican, who had one of the smoothest and most recognizable voices in the business, a German immigrant, and he's embarrassingly bad at it; he makes almost no effort at a convincing German accent, mostly substituting "v" for "w" ("Vhere are you going? Let's go that vay") and it's extremely annoying.

The film has virtually nothing to recommend it. I gave it two stars, but that's mostly for the presence of so many good western actors who got stuck in this thing. Otherwise, it's not worth your time. Skip it.