User Reviews

It didn't take too long into the picture to realize that I had seen it before, the first time being 1963's "Gunfight At Comanche Creek" starring Audie Murphy in the George Montgomery role. In checking the film credits, it surprised me to learn that different writers are listed for each film, even though 'Gunfight' is a virtual scene for scene re-creation of the original picture; both were released by Allied Artists. The 1963 film scores a bit higher by IMDb voters, and I'll tell you why - Murphy in the lead role, and 'Bones' McCoy himself, DeForest Kelley in the lead villain role as the outlaw gang leader. Not to say that Montgomery wasn't just as effective in his role as the undercover agency plant, but Murphy was the war hero. On the plus side for the earlier version, at least for me, was James Best as the conflicted outlaw who befriends Montgomery's character.

There's really no point in going into any more detail here, my review of "Gunfight At Comanche Creek" pretty much tells the story. I did get a kick though out of the sign outside the barber shop in 'Badmen' - "Up To Date System - Hot Towel" - who could pass up a come on like that! Otherwise, depending on which film you might have seen first, you'll know what's coming in the second. At least Reed Hadley was credited for the voice over narration in 'Comanche Creek', incessant as it was, and totally unnecessary to follow the story.

This half-baked horse opera about a gang of homicidal hellions who spring wanted felons from hoosegows and use them as front men when they commit crimes short-changes a clever premise and a solid cast of western veterans. The first fellow that we watch them liberate from a frontier lock-up turns out to be an undercover Chandler Detective Agency operative posing as a notorious outlaw. Such is their obsession with maintaining secrecy about their identities that they display no qualms about killing either the jailers or anybody for that matter that may later recognize them. When this well-organized gang of thieves and killers stage their robberies, they don bandannas, but they force their front men to appear bare-faced, so the bounty on his head escalates with each offense. When the bounty reaches an arbitrary dollar figure, the villains gun him down and collect the reward. Not only does the Chicago-based Chandler Detective Agency want to avenge the murder of one of their own agents, but also they plan to learn the identity of the criminal mastermind who keeps his identity a closely guarded secret from most of his accomplices.

Squared-jawed George Montgomery of "The Riders of the Purple Sage" is appropriately clean-shaven and virile as Dan Barton, an intrepid hero who risks life and limb to infiltrate and smash up the gang as well as smoke out the criminal genius behind their evil-doings. When Allied Artists released "Last of the Bad Men" in 1957, many urban crime thrillers of the late 1940s and the 1950s relied on the gimmick of a voice-over narrator to heighten the authenticity of the action by supplying audiences with many facts that the filmmakers had already clearly depicted on screen. The elaborately detailed and wholly superfluous narrator in "Last of the Bad Men" sounds like a sports commentator. Virtually everything that he comments about is self-explanatory. Essentially, "Last of the Bad Men" has a "Dragnet" quality with its overabundance of facts. Unfortunately, while the narrator may enhance the so-called realism, he becomes extremely annoying at the same time. "MST3K" could have had a field day with this standard-issue oater.

The formulaic David T. Chantler & David B. Ullman screenplay gets off to a decent enough start, but the plot unravels in the third act after the gang has broken out yet another jailbird, Kramer (Michael Ansara) a genuine owl-hoot unlike Barton or his unfortunate predecessor. Chantler & Ullman were writing partners who specialized in television, but they co-scripted the 1959 Frank MacMurray western "Face of a Fugitive." Principally, things go awry when the suspicious villains try to flush out our hero after they capture another Chandler Detective Agency operative, Roberts (Keith Larsen of "War Paint"), who had been keeping tabs on our cool-headed protagonist while the villains are holed up between jobs on a ranch behaving as if they were law-abiding cowboys. Once the wily outlaw gang takes Barton as their quasi-prisoner, they keep him on a short leash. He isn't allowed to retain his revolver after a crime. Meaning, he cannot go anywhere without arousing their suspicions. Barton tries to contact a fellow Chandler Detective one evening and is nearly caught. Meanwhile, he sets about cultivating a friendship with another gang member who the others have come to regard as their weakest link. James Best of "The Dukes of Hazzard" stands out as a hapless cowboy-gone-bad by poor economic conditions that prompted him to turn to rustling cattle. Why the bad guys recruited him as a member of their elite gang is never sufficiently explained, just another of the flaws in the Chantler & Ullman screenplay. Meanwhile, director Paul Landres tries to generate suspense as the price on Barton's head rises while the gang frees yet another felon from jail. Indeed, as Barton's fate hangs in the balance, the Chandler Detective Agency grows even more alarmed. Nevertheless, we know there isn't chance Barton will bite the dust. Eventually, the bad guys discover Roberts is a Chandler Detective, and they offer Barton a chance to prove that he isn't a detective himself if he will gun down Roberts in cold blood. Suffice to say Barton wiggles out of this corner far too easily. A variety of veteran western character actors flesh out of the cast, among them Douglas Kennedy, John Doucette, Robert Foulk, Willis Bouchey, and Michael Ansara, later of TV's "The Westerners." Decked out in a pink dance-hall dress, Meg Randall is the only female in sight, and she is strictly a supporting cast member.

Veteran TV director Paul Landres keeps the action moving along swiftly enough (it's only 79 minutes) with the inevitable western town shoot-out at the end that reveals the chief villain's identity. If the earlier scene where Barton got out of a tough spot weren't mediocre, the ending where the bad guy gets revealed is unintentionally awful. Anybody in their right mind would have cleared out of town long before he got caught in a lie by his fellow townspeople. At least, Chantler and Ullman plant a minor red herring, but savvy moviegoers will spot the dead giveaway moment long before the chief villain receives his comeuppance. "Last of the Bad Men" is at best fair as westerns go, but inferior as a mystery. Ellsworth Fredericks' Deluxe Color, widescreen Cinemascope photography makes this drab dust-raiser look better than it really should have. Fredericks' credits include the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Seven Days in May."