Thunder River Feud (1942) watch online HD

One of the better Range Busters movies. Unlike some entries in which action plays second fiddle to the comic banter, this successfully merges the two and would surely have pleased the Saturday matinée crowd at the Odeon, Isleworth.

Crash poses as a dude writer and is very funny - I have seen various comments to the effect that Corrigan's acting ability was limited but, to my mind, his performances do have a degree of subtlety, something rare in the genre - Dusty sings Old Macdonald while the old timers at a birthday party play Musical Chairs and, although Elmer has no more than a couple of lines of dialogue, watch his hair stand on end when pretty Jan Wilie gives him a smacker on his wooden cheek!

Good stuff!

You know, I can't help feeling that John 'Dusty' King was a bit of a heel in this one. He poses as a champion bronc rider wearing a belt won by his partner Ray 'Crash' Corrigan, and later uses his identity to secure a job with the Pembroke ranch, all in order to meet pretty Maybelle Pembroke (Jan Wiley). In the mean time, Crash pretends to be a writer from Boston, assuming that Miss Pembroke would prefer an 'elite' from back East where she was educated, rather than a regular cowpoke. Crash and Dusty would often spar verbally over the romantic leads in their films, but it was generally done all in good fun as they never wound up sticking around to make things permanent.

This Range Busters adventure finds the boys in the middle of a property rights feud between the Pembrokes and the Harrisons, but the real trouble between the two parties is a disaffected ranch hand playing both sides against the middle. Dick Taggart (George Chesebro) stages a gunfight between the factions with the help of his henchmen Buck and Tex, while masterminding the robbery of five thousand dollars from his former employer Jim Pembroke (Jack Holmes). Nothing too original here for a standard B Western, as the good guys come out on top as they always do.

There are a fair number of lighter moments in the picture, the best involving the third member of the Range Busters trio, Max 'Alibi' Terhune. With wooden dummy Elmer, they crack up the Pembrokes on arrival, as Elmer's hair stands on end when Maybelle plants a kiss on his cheek. Terhune uses the ventriloquist gimmick quite handily in his pictures, dating back to his work with The Three Mesquiteers in the mid-Thirties.

Dusty King also scores some points with his singing ability, serenading Maybelle with 'What a Wonderful Day', while Crash fumes as his alter-ego Jerry Griswold. Corrigan finally drops the ruse when he takes after the bad guys to stop the feud. Funny, but I never heard Thunder River mentioned by name in the story, as the feud referred to in the story had to do with a strip of land between the neighboring ranches.

All told, this is a fairly quick paced and entertaining entry in the Range Busters series. The principals share pretty much equal screen time, and it's a hoot to see Corrigan shoehorned into his 'back East' duds. However I was bothered a bit that he would trade in his championship bronc rider belt for the fancy suit and shoes. I wonder if it's still at the pawn shop.

"Thunder River Feud" meant a lot to me, for several reasons. One, I had met Ray "Crash" Corrigan about a month before his death. It was at a Western film collectors convention in Los Angeles. He was still a good-looking and healthy-looking -- he started his career as a physical-fitness trainer -- man, totally deserving of the adulation I and so many others felt.

Then, a couple years later, I met Ted Mapes, who played the villain "Buck" in this film. We used to sit on his front porch and talk. Once he said to me that he and Crash Corrigan had had a lot of fights. I said, "I guess he won them all," figuring he had meant such fights as he and Corrigan had performed in this film.

No, he said, I won my share -- and then I realized he had meant real fights!

Seeing him in "Thunder River Feud," I also realized something else he had told me should have come true: He said he had been under consideration for his own series, but somebody else got picked. Watching him in this, and knowing he was one great cowboy, I concluded he would have been also a great cowboy star, fully capable of all the riding and other action we Western fans want and expect.

He was tall and slender, a good-looking man, and fully capable of handling dialog as well as action.

Ted Mapes continued as stunt-man and stunt double, for Charles Starrett, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart, among others. (At Ted's induction into the Stuntmen's Hall of Fame banquet, where his induction was second after Yakima Canutt's, Jimmy Stewart and Charles Starrett were the keynote speakers!)

One more reason to love this movie: Max "Alibi" Terhune got to be a genuine partner, showing some acting ability he did not often get a chance to exhibit in his roles, and getting to fight and physically subdue the bad guys.

John "Dusty" King also showed he was a talented actor as well as excellent singer.

All three of the stars gave us, along with the expected excitement and action, an unusual and thoroughly enjoyable display of comedy, very integral to the story and not just silly stuff so often damaging Westerns. Earle Snell and John Vlahos wrote a charming and entertaining script, S. Roy Luby did his usual yeoman job of directing, and the result was a Monogram production of surpassing value.

Westerns on the Web and Bob Terry have earned a HUGE thank you from us Western fans. For years I bemoaned the unlikelihood of being able to see the hundreds, maybe thousands of seemingly lost-to-me movies with my favorite performers and stories. Westerns on the Web has loaded probably hundreds of them to YouTube, which is where I was able to watch "Thunder River Feud." And I highly recommend this movie.