Victor Adamson

Watched another old B western from the '30s made by Victor Adamson. He was the father of low budget exploitation director Al Adamson.

I sort of like Victor Adamson's old westerns. They were crudely made, very primitive, more violent than other B westerns and they had no singing cowboys. The hero in the one I just saw did wear an absurdly large hat and a stupid-looking western shirt and the fight scenes were terrible.

Look at the fight in The Virgin Spring. Ingmar Bergman wasn't exactly an action director but he did a better knife fight than I've seen in any western.

You hear about B westerns, how cheap they were, but when you actually try watching them they're never cheap enough and most of them seem to have been aimed at children. But one of Adamson's movies included an adultery subplot which ends with the wife being battered and the two men murdering each other. Another had a child staggering to a neighbor's house where he collapses after a brutal beating from his father. The neighbor goes to confront the father and gets shot.

The only thing westerns had going for them is that characters can freely murder each other, usually without consequence.

When I watch any western, I always wonder why everyone isn't trying to make their way back to New York or any place where appendicitis wasn't a death sentence.