Western Heritage (1948)

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Say, how does this happen? Three outlaws chase a man on horseback who gets shot from behind, but his wound is in his front left shoulder. I've seen this kind of situation in B Westerns countless times and I have to wonder whether a bullet can go completely through a person's upper body traveling through shoulder blade, rib cage and any number of bones. It just leaves me completely mystified.Well here's another quick sagebrush yarn featuring Tim Holt and sidekick Richard Martin in which we learn his entire name - Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamonte Rafferty. Explaining to a pretty senorita about his Irish connection, Chito states his father was a 'Mickey', so I guess we'll have to accept that. You know, I really hadn't noticed before, but the name of Tim Holt's character will change in these stories, but Chito's always remains the same. Don't mess with a good thing.The story is fairly typical featuring an outlaw in a land grab scheme, but this time with the added feature of a forged Spanish land grant. A trio of baddies rough up Ross Daggert (Holt) right after he got the grant in a wallet from another outlaw who wasn't on screen long enough to figure in the outcome. One of the three assumes the murdered man's identity to stake his claim of ownership to a huge tract of land in the San Carlos Valley of Arizona, thereby putting all the ranchers in the area in jeopardy of losing their land and water rights.Chito plays a larger role in this tale compared to other films I've seen. He gets in his share of fisticuffs against the bad guys and pulls a smooth move by exposing one of the suspicious ranch owners who he thinks is part of the outlaw bunch. After all the bad guys are rounded up and everything's back to normal, he proceeds to produce four wedding rings so that he and Ross can ride off into the sunset with their respective gals.I don't know all that much about the Spanish land grant business, although another reviewer here explains a bit about it. However at least one popular TV Western used the idea in one of their episodes. Season One of 'Bonanza' had a story titled 'The Spanish Grant' featuring Patricia Medina and her name in the story was Isabella Maria Ynez Y Castra De La Cuesta. I can't imagine what her married name would be if she hooked up with Chito.

Western Heritage is the only film I know where the Gadsden Purchase figures into the plot of the film. The idea here is that villain Harry Woods {there's a redundancy} has got himself possession of a Spanish land grant in the Gadsden Purchase area. Now he's setting himself up as the big kahuna in his part of the Gadsden Purchase and he's throwing out all the anglo property owners.The Gadsden Purchase was a piece of land covering about the bottom third of Arizona and a tiny corner of New Mexico with the Gila River as an approximate northern boundary. We purchased it from Mexico in 1853 at the behest of President Franklin Pierce and his Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. The idea was to have a southern transcontinental railway route and the land was necessary. Of course that route was not used first, the Civil War saw to that. James Gadsden is the guy who Pierce sent to Mexico to close the deal and the purchase is named for him.Now I'm not sure whether part of the treaty was that Spanish land grants would be honored, but for the sake of this film it is the case. Tim Holt and Richard Martin have a ranch and they ain't about to let their property go.Of course you know that this is some kind of crooked scheme afoot with classic western villain Harry Woods behind it. See the film if you are interested in what it is and how our saddle pals foil it.

I love the old B&W Westerns, and this is one of the better ones. The plot is unusual for the genre, and the action is continuous. Tim Holt gets the girl at the end, and the bad guys are sent to prison. I would like to have seen the bad guys receive more punishment from Tim Holt and his crew. The main baddie, Harry Wood, was dropped by Tim with one punch. I would have preferred to see Mr. Wood suffer a more severe penalty than a simple knockdown. Seeing the bad guys receive their deserved comeuppance is the best part of the movie!