The Bad Man (1941)

Here's another little gem noteworthy for its headliners and how truly bad it is. Other reviewers have already mentioned that it is confused and not really sure of its direction or purpose and that is certainly the case. There's comedy, crime, romance and much more but it all seems just thrown in there, a hodgepodge of vignettes with barely a hint of continuity other than the central theme of a ranch in danger of foreclosure. So as I sat watching it I kept asking myself the same question: What were the producers and writers thinking? What were the headliners thinking? Both Beery and Barrymore were seasoned actors with many hits to their credits. Why would either agree to do this film? It's hard to know for sure but judging from their gusto I'd say they did it just for the fun of it. And they are fun to watch. Scene-stealers the both of them, and damn good at it. Whenever either Beery or Barrymore appeared the energy level went up and so did the fun quotient. As for the rest of the cast they had their moments but overall they were just trying to keep up. So even though my score is rather low I suggest you don't miss this funny atrocity. And just wait for the last scene. It's a doozy!

Bad Man, The (1941) ** (out of 4) OK, try to follow this and I'll try to make sense out of it. A rancher (Ronald Reagan) and his uncle (Lionel Barrymore) are about to lose their ranch to a greedy banker (Henry Travers) after a bandit, Pancho Lopez (Wallace Beery) steals their cattle. The bandit soon learns that the rancher is the one who saved his life years earlier so he wants to do good and that includes hooking him up with the woman (Laraine Day) he loves but who is married to another man (Tom Conway). This western/comedy is rather hard to judge because it tries to do so much in its short running time but by the end of the movie the laughs had turned dry and I found myself getting rather bored. When you've got two scene chewers like Beery and Barrymore you'd expect something more and in the end this film just didn't deliver enough. I found the best thing to be Barrymore who is a hoot in his role, which really seems to have influenced Yosemite Sam. I'm not sure if the Looney Tune character was based on Barrymore's work here but it really seems like it. The two act very much the same way, use similar words and even have close to the same accent. Barrymore is downright hammy, in a good way, and you can't help but laugh at him constantly embarrassing and poking fun at Reagan. Reagan, Day and Conway add nice support but they have a hard time breaking through all the scene chewing by the two other leads. I was somewhat disappointed in Beery and his bad Mexican outfit even though I haven't seen VIVA VILLA!, which apparently this is somewhat spoofing. This was the fourth version of this film, including a 1937 version with Boris Karloff but it didn't impress me too much. The great cast will have people turning in to watch but to me only Barrymore was worth it.

After reading all the heavy reviews of this movie, I have to respond. Hey, chill out and don't be so serious, people! I had never seen it before, let alone even heard of it. So when I tuned into it one night on Turner Classics, at first I wasn't too sure what to think. But it didn't take long before I began to really like it. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than a corny, light-hearted spoof. Lionel Barrymore is great as always, and so is Wallace Beery. I really liked the fact that there is no musical soundtrack, and it's kind of a piece of theatre with long takes of dialogue and interaction between the goofy characters. All the other members of the cast like Ronald Reagan and Henry Travers simply revolve around the masterful characterizations of Barrymore and Beery. Yes, Beery has the worst Mexican accent of all time----he's doing it deliberately for laughs. And nobody can play a crusty old curmudgeon better than Lionel Barrymore, the world's greatest scene stealer. These two legendary talents have a great rapport. Don't even remotely attempt to take this movie seriously in any way, just enjoy it for what it is and appreciate the amazing talents of two of the greatest actors in movie history. Who couldn't help but laugh at the final scene of Beery galloping through the desert on his horse, pulling Barrymore in his wheelchair? Great comedic acting and a really original, funny script.

Until Wallace Beery shows up, this is a dull Western with an all-too-familiar plot. But Beery, despite the worst Mexican accent of all time, is a hoot. He must have realized what a joke he had made out of Pancho Villa in VIVA VILLA! (1937) and decided to go for the laughs this time around. Beery ridicules everyone in sight, making fun of Ronald Reagan's ethics. As much as he tries to help Reagan, Beery does not understand all of the hero's moral objections. Berry and Lionel Barrymore fight to see who can be the bigger ham. Tom Conway, looking just like brother George Sanders, is a slimy villain who cannot compete with Beery. Laraine Day is useless as the token romantic interest. Viewers need to treat this silly movie as a what it is--a farce.