Overland Stage Raiders [VHS]
It's incredible that, mere months before his breakout role inStagecoach, John Wayne should have been working on Saturday-matinee fodder like Republic'sThree Mesquiteersseries. To be sure, by Poverty Row standards the Mesquiteers pictures were well above average, and their headlong pace ensured that no kid got bored. But being dragooned into costellar partnership with Ray "Crash" Corrigan and Max Terhune was a career low. (Wayne's character, Stony Brooke, stood in the same relation to Corrigan's Tucson Smith and Terhune's Lullaby Joslin as George Clooney's Ulysses to his partners inO Brother, Where Art Thou?: he seemed to be "the only one with the capacity for abstract thought.")And speaking of careers,Overland Stage Raidersis infamous for being the last credit the legendary Louise Brooks ever had. Less than a decade earlier she ruled the German Expressionist screen in G.W. Pabst'sDiary of a Lost Girland, as Lulu,Pandora's Box. Hollywood didn't know what to make of Brooks pre-Pabst, and they didn't even try afterwards. Still, the lady is on record as having found her last leading man a dreamboat.But really: a Western calledOverland Stage Raidersthat lacks a stagecoach? What they call a "land stage" is actually abus, and within minutes it's been supplanted by a couple of airplanes. There's also a train, and a train robbery--that is, they steal the train. And that's not even counting a cattle drive, a midair holdup, and several gunfights. Did we mention the headlong pace?--Richard T. Jameson