The Jayhawkers! (1959)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Disapointment

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Plot-- An ex-renegade (Parker) agrees to infiltrate a renegade band in return for a pardon from the feds. Then too, he's got a personal grudge against the band's leader (Chandler) for victimizing his wife and their farm. Trouble is the leader is kind of a likable guy. So which way will the ex-renegade go.Somewhere inside all the turgid talk is a good story of conflict between Parker's emotions and his principles. Trouble is the studio (Paramount) appears more interested in playing up the three leads than in the story itself. Thus we get a ton of talky scenes with some combination of Parker, Chandler, and Aubert instead of action or suspense. So western fans may feel cheated in the action department. I suspect four scriptwriters working on the same screenplay have something to do with that. Then too, the direction (Frank) is pretty flat. In fact, the director's resume (IMDB) appears more at home with fluff than outdoor drama. It's noteworthy too that the locations never leave greater LA, so we're also short in the scenic department. That's especially unfortunate since the film needs some sweep to match the story's scale. After all, the script is playing with the disposition of an entire state, Kansas. On the other hand, Paramount did pop for an army of extras to fill out the mustering scenes.I winced at one point where Chandler says life is short, or words to that effect. Tragically, Chandler himself would die two years later as a result of medical malpractice. So his words here seem more than just a little prophetic. Too bad the menacing Henry Silva is largely wasted in a routine role. Some close-ups of his sinister sneer would have added needed dramatic impact. All in all, the movie's a turgid disappointment despite a capable cast, a good core conflict, and big screen VistaVision.

The Jayhawkers maybe unique in the annals of screen history in that as a film with a Civil War era plot it makes absolutely no mention of slavery. Nor are there any black people in this cast.What we have here in ante-bellum Kansas is the story of Luke Darcy who envisions himself as starting some kind of fascistic territorial republic in the struggle for Kansas's loyalty. Jeff Chandler plays Darcy and he is a fascinatingly evil man with a great deal of charisma. To bring him down military governor Herbert Rudley uses ex-renegade raider Fess Parker. Parker and Chandler have a history and it involves Parker's late wife who Chandler ran off with and abandoned. Parker's got ample reason to just shoot him down like a dog, but Rudley wants him alive to stand trial. Complicating things further is Nicole Maurey and her two kids who Parker's fallen for and then Chandler takes an interest when he sees her. The story does get a bit silly at times, but the players are all doing their best. Henry Silva plays one of Chandler's raiders who has an incredible jealousy of Parker and a barely disguised gay crush on Chandler. Jerome Moross wrote the music score and it's lively and quickens the pace of this film. Fans of the Wagon Train series will recognize parts of the score as Wagon Train's theme. The story of Kansas before the Civil War, usually with John Brown as the protagonist has supplied the cinema with a whole range of films. The Jayhawkers with the charismatic, fascistic, but wholly fictitious Luke Darcy is far from the best one ever done.

This movie made me sick when I saw it on TV many years ago. Jeff Chandler's character is decent, a guy you don't want to see taken down? He says to Fess Parker's character, regarding the way he treated the man's dead (at his hands) wife, "To me, a good woman is like a good bottle of wine: once you've used it up, you throw the container away." He goes through women like kleenexes and disposes of them with less mercy. He took the man's wife, seduced her, then killed her when he got bored with her.This is decent?Fess Parker's character likes him?There is no reason for Fess Parker not to kill the disgusting creep on sight.But maybe the people who praise this movie also agree with that characterization of women.

"The Jayhawkers" was released in 1959 and starred Jeff Chandler as an ambitious person eager to control pre-War Kansas, and Fess Parker has to try and stop him in his scheme. Reason: Parker, as Cam Beeker, had broken out of a federal prison to try and come back to his wife, and his ranch in Kansas. He finds that his wife has died, and the ranch has been sold to a family, headed by French actress Nicole Maurey. He also learns that Luke Darcy, played by Chandler, was the reason behind his wife's death and the ranch being lost. Beeker becomes a member of the gang in order to win his pardon from the territorial governor of Kansas. Upon joining the gang of raiders calling themselves the Jayhawkers, he starts to accept the ambition of Darcy, because the man seems intent on bringing peace to the territory, but under his rule. The viewer of this watchable western will be asking which way Parker's character will finally go; either turn Darcy over to the governor, or become part of the plan to control the territory. A good 7/10