Movie review – Errol #36 - “Montana” (1950) **1/2

Most of us are familiar with the battle between cattlemen and poor-but-honest homesteaders. Less familiar is that between cattlemen and poor-but-honest sheep herders – mainly because, I guess, the sheep never took off in the US the way it did in Australia, and let’s face it the sheep is a pretty wimpy animal. Nonetheless, the clash formed the basis for a number of Westerns, including The Sheepman and this one.

Errol Flynn plays a sheepman, originally from the US who grew up in Australia (unreal!) after cattlemen shot his paw; now he’s back to the US to drive his sheep through Montana. This was one of a pair of Westerns Warners shunted Errol off into after two big budget films. It’s made with customary polish and vim and has the benefit of being in colour with some decent action sequences. Errol doesn’t seem that interested in the proceedings, which is a shame (though he does have a moment where he goes undercover as a peddler); neither, more surprisingly, does S K Sakall. Errol gets beaten up, thrown off a bull and even shot by his love interest here – he was showing his age.

The most interesting thing about the movie is the fact Errol plays an Aussie (disappointingly little is made of this) and the fact the theme of the movie seems to be about getting equal rights for sheep herders (a rare civil rights for animals movie?) Alexis Smith teamed magically with Errol in Gentleman Jim but never seemed to catch the same fire in subsequent teamings and that’s unfortunately true here – maybe she had to play a hoity-toity miss. Having said that, she and Errol sing a duet together which is a lot of fun. (NB just thinking about it, in the late 40s you get the feeling Warners tried to throw Errol a lot of bones here and there eg, “you can do comedy”, “you can do melodrama”, “OK its a Western but you can play an Aussie and have a scene where you sing”).

The villains and supporting players are undercast and after a while all the talk about “we’ve got to do it for the sheep and the rights of sheep herders everywhere” just gets silly; when Errol rides the sheep through town at the end it’s not exactly a great moment in Western history (especially when Smith then shoots him – and apologises straight away).