Streets of Ghost Town (1950)

"Streets of Ghost Town" is another in the Durango Kid series starring Charles Starrett and Smiley Burnette. If you haven't seen earlier entries in the series, you might enjoy this one. It's told mostly in flashbacks and uses generous amounts of stock footage in the telling. Much of the back story including a land rush, cattle stampede and horse stampede come from earlier films.Steve Woods (Starrett), Smiley and the Sheriff of Dusty Creek (Stanley Andrews) arrive in the ghost town of Shadeville in search of a lost treasure hidden by outlaw Bill Donner (George Chesebro) years before. Outlaw Bart Selby (Frank Fenton) whom Donner and his partner Wicks (John Cason) had doubled crossed also seeks the loot. Donner after years running with a gang which included Bob Kortman , is arrested and sent to prison.Donner escapes prison but is captured by Selby's gang and is blinded. He then goes into hiding in the ghost town with only his young grandson Tommy (Don Reynolds) to help him. Grand Daughter Doris (Mary Ellen Kay) also has an interest. Tommy makes an important discovery. Selby arrives on the scene as does Durango and.......................................................................It was nice to see grizzled old veteran George Chesebro given a major role for a change even though most of his part was in the stock footage. Fenton didn't make a very convincing gang leader. Mary Ellen Kay was totally wasted in her brief role. Starrett has little to do except story tell and show up as Durango at the end to round up the bad guys. The Colorado Rangers singing group provide the entertainment along with Smiley.Did you ever wonder how Smiley never knew Durango's identity even though he was always close pal with the Steve character?

No secret that Columbia Pictures recycles old footage. Cowboy idol Charles Starrett as Steve Woods and masked champion The Durango Kid teams again with his sidekick Smiley Burnette. The plot is thin, but enough to sustain a Saturday morning crowded theater. Looking for gold in a deserted town, Steve and Smiley along with the Dusty Creek sheriff(Stanley Andrews)discuss the case of Bill Donner(George Chesebro), who double crossed his partners for their share of gold. Doris Donner(Mary Ellen Kay)is available, but has no clues to where the gold was hidden. The only one that knows is the aged Bill Donner, sitting in jail with the loss of his eye sight. Flashbacks (previous footage of Durango Kid movies)extend and holds STREETS of GHOST TOWN together.Other players include: Frank Fenton, Don Reynolds and Ozie Walters.

... and that's the case here. The story is told mainly in flashback as The Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) recounts the tale of a stolen stash of gold known only to blind outlaw Bill Donner and a child in which Donner confided, but is desired by outlaw Frank Fenton. The "ghost town" was once a thriving place, but Fenton ran everyone out of town by terrorizing the settlers, all so he could have the place to himself and eventually find the gold. There are lots of good action shots in this film mainly because about two thirds of the film is stock footage from past Durango Kid westerns. Only the ending shots and the scenes where Durango is recounting the tale are new footage. There are some macabre elements here you don't normally see in these westerns, such as outlaw Bill Donner locking his partners in the hidden vault with the gold and leaving them, now two of the richest men in the world, to die in a grave of gold. In another scene Donner is captured by Fenton's gang and then returns blinded. It is not clear whether Donner blinded himself so he could not be forced to divulge the location of the loot, or if Fenton did it out of meanness, and in this case, stupidity. If you haven't seen the past Durango Kid westerns and therefore recognize all of the stock footage, and you like westerns in general, you should like this one.

I would like to comment on the previous blogs about the re-use of old footage. Yes, there was a lot of stock footage used in the Durango Kid films, just as there had been in the Lash Larue series. This had nothing to do with television, since TV's influence didn't make an impression until the early Fifties. Post-war production costs and the tight budgets which governed these films were to blame. Actually, it made sense. Why would you shoot new footage of a masked rider on a white horse again and again when you already had footage on this? My friend Barry Shipman, who wrote the Durangos, told me that at the end of the series in 1952, he was simply writing continuity so that the old footage and the new footage could be matched up. What the hey? The kids didn't care about story lines. Just keep the Durango Kid riding and shooting. The comment about the hokey comedy of 1950 amused me. Burnette was doing the same comedy on Petticoat Junction, but there was a laugh track added to tell the audience when to laugh. We didn't have the laugh track at the movies so we had to decide for ourselves what was funny and what wasn't. Also, note the printed narratives at the beginning of every Durango with no off screen narrator reading. Judging from those words, the scriptwriters must have thought we were pretty intelligent. Could the kids today read that without help?