Rare Westerns on Netflix Instant Watch Capsule Reviews, vol.4

The Dalton Girls (1957)

Holly is being raped by the local mortician (boy that’s creepy), so her sister has no choice but to kill him, and so begins the Dalton sisters’ careers as bandits. Who are the Dalton sisters? Let’s ask the local townspeople: “They’re nothing but trigger happy little tramps!”, “They were hussies! Shameless, good for nothing hussies!”. I don’t know about you, but I’m already sold; those are my kind of ladies.

There’s trigger happy Rose (who “kills like other women love”), she of the black hat and foot stomping meanie method and a shirt that isn’t fully buttoned. There’s Holly with the bullet bra (not to imply that wearing a bullet bra is an invitation to rape), and the youngest Dalton girl Marigold, who wants to get married at 16 to some schlub, but he flees when he finds out she’s a bandit by proxy. Since Marigold’s older sisters look out for her, they chase after him, lasso him down off his horse, and hogtie his ass. Marigold is the “aw shucks” emotional Dalton sister, who at one point gets so upset that her sisters are arguing that she pulls out her six shooter and cries “if you don’t stop arguing I’m gonna shoot myself!”. Maybe really emotional 16 year olds shouldn’t carry a gun at all times.

Rose also sings a song with the following lyric “you can’t trust a man, because a man will lie, but a gun stays beside you until the day you die”. So, in summary, we have a B-western that almost crosses into the mid-fifties girl gang genre, and a potential camp classic waiting to be discovered.

Great B&W transfer. The movie was supposedly released on VHS, but if so, it must be rare as balls.

Brimstone (1949)


Walter Brennan is a curmudgeonly father of a family of ranchers who fight off various bandits and such. The family becomes strained when a son falls in love with a bandit girl and gets into trouble with the law. The movie is Walter Brennan’s through and through, but I find his mannered old man schtick irritating. Others might describe it as “great acting”, and those people should check this one out.

Never released on home video. The color transfer is pretty good, but the whole thing has a curious teal tint (sort of like Leave Her to Heaven), and the skin tones are orange-y. There’s also an odd luminescence to the photography. The film is presented in "Trucolor", so maybe that’s how it’s supposed to look, but something looks a little off to me.

Oklahoma Territory (1960)

A district attorney investigates the murder of an Indian, traveling back and forth between the white man jurisdiction and Indian lands collecting clues, all the while steadfastly sticking to his code of justice despite several opportunities to take the easy way out. A pretty good script is almost ruined by the lifeless lead, as well as the ridiculous performance of Ted de Corsia as “Chief Buffalo Horn”. The lovely Gloria Talbott does liven things up in her role of Ruth Redhawk, she of the bullet bra and sexy shoepolish complexion. She’s not exactly all that believable as a Native American, but frankly, I don’t give a shit.


Excellent widescreen transfer. Just recently released as part of MGM’s burn on demand DVD-R program. Never previously released on home video.