BY JOHN M. WHALEN
On Sept. 15, 2000 the New
York Times ran an interview with Quentin Tarantino in which the famed
director raved at length about a Roy Rogers movie called “The Golden Stallion
(1949).†He absolutely loved the film and its director, William Witney, calling
him a “forgotten master.†According to Tarantino, Witney was the ultimate genre
film director, making everything from the classic Republic Pictures serials, to
western feature films (including 27 Roy Rogers flicks). He later did films for
American International, and shot numerous TV series including “Bonanza.†The
thing that appealed to QT the most about “The Golden Stallion†was the way
Witney was able to sell the idea that Roy Rogers regarded Trigger as much a
friend as any human being could ever be. He does five years on a chain gang to
save his horse from being destroyed after being framed for killing a man. As far-fetched
as that idea sounds, Tarantino thought Witney, Roy and Trigger absolutely made you believe it. (Click here to read the NY Times article.)
In “The Golden Stallion†Trigger has a bit of a fling
with a mare that smugglers were using to transport diamonds across the border.
A colt named Trigger Jr., was the result of that dalliance, and screenwriter
Gerald Geraghty picked up that thread to build a new story for Roy’s next
picture. In some ways, the result, “Trigger, Jr.,†is an even better movie,
with a story line that has darker undertones and a shocker of an ending.
In this picture, Roy is in charge of his father’s
traveling circus and sets up headquarters for the winter at the ranch of his
dad’s former partner Colonel Harkrider (George Cleveland). Roy’s publicist,
Splinters (Gordon Jones), thinks the idea of wintering there will bring good
publicity, but the Colonel isn’t too happy about it. The Colonel’s older daughter
was recently killed in an accident during her bareback riding routine. As a
result of the trauma her death caused, the Colonel himself has been wheel
chair-bound ever since. Worse, his grandson, Larry (Peter Miles), is terrified
of horses. He has nightmares about them. The Colonel constantly berates the boy
for being a coward. The Colonel’s younger daughter, Kay, (Dale Evans) hopes
having the circus on the ranch will help the two of them recover their
psychological balance. But she knows it won’t be easy.
It doesn’t help that all the local ranchers in the are
being muscled by a villain with no less a sinister name than Manson (Grant
Withers), who heads The Range Patrol, an outfit that provides protection for a
price. Those who don’t join up find barns burning, and livestock suddenly
disappearing. No sooner does Roy arrive than he finds Trigger Sr. and Jr. about
to be kidnapped by a couple of rangers. Roy and Splinters manage to rescue the
horses after some fisticuffs, of course. (People complain about violence in
films today, and say they wish movies could be like they were in the old days.
I guess they never saw any of Witney’s Rogers films. They were full of
shootouts, fistfights, bar room brawls, and they didn’t spare the fake blood
either.)
Roy and the Colonel convince the other ranchers to stop
paying the Range Patrol, which prompts Manson to put more pressure on them.
There’s an interesting historical element introduced into the story at this
point. At a horse auction, Roy finds out that there was an Army remount station
nearby. The remount stations were where the Army bought, trained and sold horses
for service in the U.S. Calvary. The station is out of use now, but a white
stallion “killer†horse is being kept there pending its destruction by lethal
injection. Roy tries to buy him but the sheriff informs him that there’s a
court order calling for the horse’s destruction. However, Manson puts the doctor
(I. Stanford Jolley) on his payroll and they take him to a hideout in the hills
so they can use him to terrorize and kill the ranchers’ horses. He becomes
known as The Phantom and it isn’t long before the other ranchers cave in the
Rangers and Roy and the Colonel find themselves alone in opposing them.
The situation worsens as Trigger is attacked by the
Phantom and a blow to his optical nerve renders him blind. Trigger goes down
and he can’t get up. Things get pretty tense as Larry decides he must be a
coward as his grandfather says, since he’s too afraid to even help Trigger. He
runs away and in the meantime more livestock are being killed. I don’t think
I’ve ever seen any other western where so many horses are shown dead or dying
out on the prairie, in this case all victims of the Phantom.
“Trigger, Jr.’s†brisk pace (it’s only 66 minutes long) moves
over the downbeat elements of the story so quickly, you don’t get much time to
react. But when you think about them later, you realize it’s all pretty heavy
stuff. There are only three musical numbers in the movie and one of them is the
haunting “Stampede†which is used to illustrate one of Larry’s nightmares. Jack
Marta’s cinematography and lighting create an impressionistic mini-masterpiece.
It’s not all doom and gloom, of course. The colorful circus wagons, the scenes
of the acrobats and aerialists rehearsing, the lions and trained seals performing
provide splendid splashes of color to offset the somber story line.