Cattle Drive (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Dec 04, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Kurt NeumannRelease Date(s)
1951 (November 19, 2024)Studio(s)
Universal-International (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: N/A
Review
Essentially Captains Courageous Goes West, Cattle Drive (1951) is an unassuming, unpretentious little Western, loosely adapting Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 novel, itself famously made into MGM’s 1937 film version with Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew, those roles played here by Joel McCrea and Dean Stockwell. Undoubtedly the huge success of Howard Hawks’s recent Red River (1948) also helped spur its production. At 77 minutes it’s really more of a B-Western for kids, gussied up with Technicolor, but for young boys who saw it when it was new, it must have been highly satisfying. McCrea, star of innumerable film classics—Foreign Correspondent, Sullivan’s Travels, The More the Merrier, Ride the High Country, etc.—himself regarded Cattle Drive a personal favorite among his films.
Chester Graham, Jr. (Stockwell) is the spoiled, unruly son of an inattentive, widowed railroad magnate (Leon Ames). In an early scene Junior rudely admonishes his valet aboard the family’s private train car for not serving him out-of-season strawberries. While the train stops for water somewhere in the desert, Chester wanders off and the train leaves without him.
Wandering the barren landscape, Chester encounters cattle driver Dan Mathews (McCrea), he unsuccessfully trying to rope a black wild stallion. Dan rescues Chester when the horse nearly tramples him, taking the boy back to his camp and introducing him to other cowboys, including the drive’s leader, Cap (Howard Petrie), cook Dallas (Chill Wills), “Careless” Morgan (Bob Steele), Chuck (Chuck Roberson), and surly Jim Currie (Henry Brandon), who regards the boy’s presence as bad luck for their cattle drive. Chester, of course, initially wants nothing to do with these unwashed, unsophisticated cowhands, but gradually learns basic values from father figure Dan.
Cattle Drive is not a classic of the Western genre though it is pleasant enough. McCrea exuded unpretentious honesty and decency as few Hollywood stars did, making him ideal as the Western movie equivalent of Kipling’s Portuguese fisherman. Further, McCrea was the Real Deal: he owned a 3,000-acre cattle ranch producing 200,000 pounds of beef annually. He once listed his occupation as “rancher” and his hobby as “acting.” Impossibly handsome in his youth and appearing in a wide range of films, after 1946 he appeared almost exclusively in Westerns because he considered it unseemly for older actors “trying to look young, falling in love with attractive girls.” This was 15-year-old Dean Stockwell’s last film as a child actor; he took several years off, returning in adult roles from 1956. Though Cattle Drive is the lesser film overall compared to Captains Courageous, McCrea and Stockwell give superior performances.
The compact supporting cast is also above average and used well. His notorious Oscar campaign for The Alamo notwithstanding, Chill Wills was an underrated and surprisingly versatile actor (he was, for instance, genuinely unnerving as a psychopathic murderer in an episode of Gunsmoke); it’s nice to see Henry Brandon play something other than an Indian chief in a Western, and compact but rugged Bob Steele is always a welcome presence.
Director Kurt Neumann had a knack for desert locations, as evidenced by his spooky use of similar locations in the previous year’s Rocketship X-M, the desert substituting for the planet Mars. The Technicolor lensing by U-I contractee Maury Gertsman is unremarkable but professional and workmanlike.
Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray of Cattle Drive sources a good, not great, video master, the film presented in its original 1.37:1 standard frame aspect ratio. The transfer looks best in close-ups, where details of the actors’ faces really come out well, and I noticed no misalignment issues. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is strong, and optional English subtitles are provided on this Region “A” encoded disc.
Surprisingly, there are no extra features at all, not even an original trailer, though trailers (ads) for other, related Kino titles are offered.
Cattle Drive is a nice, little movie, a bit like the later, better Mackintosh & T.J. (1975), Roy Rogers’s last starring film. Not a classic of the genre, but pleasant.
- Stuart Galbraith IV