Cattle Empire

The Town Of Hamilton Bids You Welcome.

Joel McCrea stars as a trail boss falsely imprisoned for his men's misdemeanours. Released and suffering at the hands of an unforgiving and irate town, he's hired by a blind Don Haggerty to drive his herd - but Haggerty has his own agenda's on this trip.

A routine Western that is chiefly saved from the bottom rung by the presence of Joel McCrea. McCrea was a real life cowboy type who owned and worked out of a ranch in California, thus he gives this standard Oater a naturalistic core from which to tell the story. If only they could have given him some decent actors to work with, and, or, a bolder script, then this might have turned out better than it did.

Directed by Charles Marquis Warren (mor...

Joel McCrea holds this cattle-driving western together competently enough as "Cord", a man who must get his huge herd of cows to market. Problem is, one herd belongs to the citizens of a town that he let his previous crew trash - earning him a five year spell in jail. The other herd is owned by a competitor - so no easy task here for the man. Unusually for the genre, and thankfully here, we have a rather more feisty and independently minded leading lady in the form of "Sandy" (Gloria Talbott) who has just a little of the Barbara Stanwyck about her as the trail progresses. Regrettably, though, the bulk of this film is all a little dull as we watch cows meander around peppered with some rather inane dialogue and some contrived contretemps bet...