Product Description

Errol Flynn Tames the West in these Four Classic Westerns!MONTANA - Big Sky Country is cattle country! But sheep rancher Flynn has other ideas in this gun-blazing range-war saga. Alexis Smith co-stars.ROCKY MOUNTAIN - The Civil War comes to California and rebel leader Flynn finds that marauding Shoshones may be fiercer foes than the Union Army. With future Mrs. Flynn Patrice Wymore.SAN ANTONIO - A man is only as good as his aim when Flynn rides into ol' San Antone to hunt cattle rustlers. A landmark of Western excitement with an amazing saloon shoot-'em-up...and lovely Alexis Smith.VIRGINIA CITY - Union officer Flynn goes undercover to stop a gold-laden Nevada wagon train rolling to Dixie. With Randolph Scott and yes Humphrey Bogart as a pencil-mustached desperado.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/CLASSICS UPC: 085391188216 Manufacturer No: 1000027305

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22350 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-08-26
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 4
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 389 minutes

Features

• MONTANA Big Sky Country is cattle country! But sheep rancher Flynn has other ideas in this gun-blazing range-war saga. Alexis Smith co-stars.ROCKY MOUNTAIN The Civil War comes to California, and rebel leader Flynn finds that marauding Shoshones may be fiercer foes than the Union Army. With future Mrs. Flynn Patrice Wymore.SAN ANTONIO A man is only as good as his aim when Flynn rides into ol? San A

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Errol Flynn is primarily recognized for his swashbuckling roles, but let's adjust that. As Frank Thompson notes in his characteristically droll and well-informed commentary on Virginia City, Flynn was born to star in period pictures, and that included Westerns. This son of Tasmania slipped into Stetson and six-gun mode without strain, and without having to conceal his somewhere-in-the-British-Empire accent. Which is only fair: the director of his first three Wild West outings was the Hungarian-born, English-language-mauling Michael Curtiz. Not to beat about the sagebrush, the best of Flynn's Westerns--the Curtiz-directed Dodge City (1939) and Santa Fe Trail (1940), plus Raoul Walsh's They Died With Their Boots On (1942)--are not included in this set. Of the four films that are, Curtiz's Virginia City (1940) is much the liveliest, and certainly the most handsome. Set in the closing months of the Civil War, it's about Confederate loyalists making one last effort to stave off defeat on the battlefields back East by transporting five million dollars in gold from the Nevada mining town of the title. Union spy Flynn spars with Rebel counterpart Randolph Scott, as both also vie for the love of saloon songstress and gold-plot mastermind Miriam Hopkins. Warner Bros. hoped to replicate the Dodge City hit formula, even recycling the same town set (albeit in black and white instead of Technicolor) and re-teaming cinematographer Sol Polito (who was better at black and white anyway), screenwriter Robert Buckner (strewing illogic and coincidence with abandon), and composer Max Steiner, as well as Flynn sidekicks Alan Hale and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams. But who thought of (mis)casting Humphrey Bogart as a Mexican bandito--possibly the nadir of Bogie's life as a contract player? On the upside, extensive location shooting around Flagstaff, Arizona, gave Virginia City by far the most striking scenery of any Flynn Western.

Flynn spent the WWII years concentrating on war-related films, but 1945 found him saddling up again for San Antonio (or did it?--he's clearly doubled in horseback longshots). He plays a Texas rancher turned de facto outlaw by virtue of losing his land in a cattle war and being driven into Mexican exile. Never fear, he's soon finessed his way back across the border and set about undermining those who wronged him and his friends. San Antonio was Flynn's fifth Western but only the second in Technicolor--bright, bold color, and lots of it. Truth to tell, it's a bit of a mishmash, with so much skulking around upstairs, downstairs, and backstage at chief villain Paul Kelly's Bella Union music-hall saloon that it begins to resemble Feydeau farce. The script is credited to Alan Le May (The Searchers) and W.R. Burnett, and the direction to David Butler--though Raoul Walsh is known to have lent a hand (surely "Get that drunken cat off the bar" is a Walsh touch). Leading lady Alexis Smith sings a few songs and her brassy red hair is grand for Technicolor, but her romance with Flynn is a pale shadow of their delightful pairing three years earlier in Gentleman Jim. Warner Home Video has yet to release Walsh's Silver River (1948), the last Flynn Western to boast grade-A production values and co-stars, so that leaves two virtual B movies from 1950 to round out the set. In the 76-minute Montana, an Australian sheepman ventures into Big Sky country, "where cattle was king," and overcomes years of bloody resistance to the idea that sheep and cattle can coexist not only peacefully but profitably. Alexis Smith, who had earned her first billing opposite Flynn in 1941's Dive Bomber and is paired with him for the last time here, inveigles him into a frontier duet.

The somewhat better Rocky Mountain (83 minutes) borrows a leaf from Virginia City to propose another Confederate adventure in the West, an Army patrol attempting to join with Rebel sympathizers in California and foment an armed uprising. The mission gets sidetracked at Ghost Mountain, where the presence of hostile Shoshone Indians urges Rebs and Yankee cavalry to make common cause. Flynn plays it low-key throughout, as though his character, a man of honor in a world that scarcely recalls the notion, had already accepted the lostness of his cause. Each member of Flynn's small command has enough of a backstory to sit around and philosophize about--a narrative tactic anticipating how 90 percent of screentime in the coming decade of Westerns on TV would be filled. William Keighley (who would direct Flynn's last Warner film, The Master of Ballantrae, in 1953) breaks things up as best he can with the multi-tiered rockscape setting. Incidentally, Flynn's leading lady this time is his third and final wife, Patrice Wymore, cast as a Union officer's fiancée whose stagecoach gets ambushed nearby. Each of the films rates its own disc, with accompanying "Warner Night at the Movies" shorts and trailers from the season when the movie was released. Only two boast a commentary, and of these, only the one on Virginia City is worth the listen. Visual and technical quality is excellent overall. --Richard T. Jameson

From the back cover
Montana: Big Sky Country is cattle country! But sheep rancher Flynn has other ideas in this gun-blazing range-war saga. Alexis Smith co-stars. In Technicolor. Rocky Mountain: The Civil War comes to California, and rebel leader Flynn finds that marauding Shoshones may be fiercer foes than the Union Army. With future Mrs. Flynn, Patrice Wymore. San Antonio: A man is only as good as his aim when Flynn rides into ol' San Antone to hunt cattle rustlers. A landmark of Western excitement with an amazing saloon shoot-'em-up... and the lovely Alexis Smith. In Technicolor. Virginia City: Union officer Flynn goes undercover to stop a gold-laden Nevada wagon train rolling to Dixie. With Randolph Scott and, yes, Humphrey Bogart as a pencil-mustached desperado.

Customer Reviews

Essentially a volume 3 of the Flynn Signature series
Only "Virginia City" has an A-film feel about it with Michael Curtiz directing and notable Warner costars. The other three are B Westerns in my opinion, but Flynn's presence always made any film much better. His performances in all of these films are very good, he just doesn't always have the best material with which to work, and in some cases he is working with some very bizarre casting. The extra features bring this package up to four stars in my opinion, but I don't understand why WHV just didn't go ahead and add "Silver River" to the set and make it the usual five film classic box set. Someone else has already done an excellent job of summarizing each film. So I'll just mention the extra features for the set, the director in each case, and my personal rating of each film on a five star scale:

Montana (1950) directed by Ray Enright. (3/5)
The weakest of the four films in the set.
Extra Features:
Vintage Newsreel
Warner Night at the Movies 1950 Short Subjects Gallery
Joe McDoakes Comedy Short: So You Want a Raise
Classic Cartoon: It's Hummer Time
Trailers of Montana and 1950's Chain Lightning
Bonus Gallery of Santa Fe Trail Series Western Shorts: Oklahoma Outlaws, Wagon Wheels West and Gun to Gun

Rocky Mountain (1950) directed by William Keighley (3.5/5)
Begins well, ends well, but the middle does sag a bit, which is unusual for a Flynn film of any genre.
Extra Features:
Commentary by biographer Thomas McNulty [McNulty looks at Flynn's career, his unique qualities as a Western hero and his romance with costar Patrice Wymore.]
Warner Night at the Movies 1950 Short Subjects Gallery
Vintage Newsreel
Trailers of Rocky Mountain and The Breaking Point
Bonus Gallery of Santa Fe Trail Series Western Shorts: Roaring Guns, Wells Fargo Days and Trial by Trigger
Classic Cartoon: Two's a Crowd
Joe McDoakes Comedy Short So You Want to Move

San Antonio (1945) directed by David Butler (3.5/5)
Extra Features:
Warner Night at the Movies 1945 Short Subjects Gallery:
Vintage Newsreel
Oscar-Nominated Vitaphone Varieties Short Story of a Dog
Vintage Shorts: Frontier Days and Peeks at Hollywood
Classic Cartoons: A Tale of Two Mice and Wagon Heels
Trailers of San Antonio and The Corn Is Green

Virginia City (1940) directed by Michael Curtiz. (4/5)
How weird to see Humphrey Bogart playing his role of the bandit with some of the oddest diction ever. Not nearly as good as Dodge City but still good.
Extra Features:
Commentary by historian Frank Thompson [Thompson discusses this all-star collaboration with Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Randolph Scott and Miriam Hopkins, and the challenges faced by director Michael Curtiz throughout production.]
Warner Night at the Movies 1940 Short Subjects Gallery
Vintage Newsreel
Technicolor Shorts: Cinderella's Feller and The Flag of Humanity
1936 WB Short: The Light Brigade Rides Again
Classic Cartoons: Cross Country Detours and Confederate Honey
Trailers of Virginia City and A Dispatch from Reuters

Recommended for the Errol Flynn completist. If you haven't got them already, get the excellent two volumes of Errol Flynn's Signature Collection. They are a very good introduction to Flynn's work - especially volume one - and should give you a better idea if you would like this set.

Flynn's Westerns - A Unique Sub-Genre
There are westerns (with John Wayne, Gary Cooper, directed by John Ford, Howard Hawks, not to mention Roy Rogers and Gene Autry) and then there are Errol Flynn's westerns. I think I saw some of Flynn's westerns on TV before I saw any of the others and was therefore very surprised to find that DODGE CITY, VIRGINIA CITY, THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON, etc., were unlike any of the other films in the genre. That said, these films created a unique western sub-genre on their own terms, mainly because Flynn was a unique screen presence and Warners figured out how to tailor stories to his personality.

This four-film collection brings together the less celebrated films. 1940's VIRGINIA CITY is basically a "prequel" to 1939's DODGE CITY with Flynn, Alan Hale, and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams playing virtually the same characters they did in the first film. My guess is that the romantic subplot with Miriam Hopkins (she and Flynn have absolutely NO screen chemistry)would have confused the love match in DODGE CITY had they played the same characters. Basically, VIRGINIA CITY is a shaggy dog story; that is, it starts off great even showing some influence of Ford's STAGECOACH with its extended sequences on a stage coach (and repeating one of STAGECOACH's best stunt scenes). But the plot gets so involved with so many characters that there's enough story for three films. You know things have gotten out of hand when you find yourself rooting for the Bogart character.

VIRGINIA CITY's saving grace is that it is an expertly made production and the money really shows on the screen. Technicolor would have been nice (as in DODGE CITY) but the b/w photography is crisp. Max Steiner contributes another fine score although some of the story's characters, like Frank McHugh, seem to get lost in the plot. This epic-scale film is a testament to the confidence Warners had in Errol Flynn at that time. It seems that almost every film he made during those years was an epic production and Flynn, at 30 years of age, never looked better.

Fast forward five years to the next film in this set, SAN ANTONIO, and we see more of a Roy Rogers influence than John Ford - Flynn even sings in this one! Glorious Technicolor is back (which makes up for a multitude of other shortcomings) but Flynn has developed a new screen persona by now. Gone is the noble Robin Hood-like knight that he more or less played in his films up to 1942. His well-publicized trial for statutory rape (he was acquitted however) persuaded Warners to reshape his character along the lines of Rhett Butler - a seeming gentleman with a shady past, decent people didn't speak to him - and this is the Flynn we see in films from about 1943 on.

SAN ANTONIO is Flynn's fifth western (of eight) and the first that was not an historical western. Played strictly as post-WWII escapist entertainment, Flynn at 35 is beginning to look like his dissipated lifestyle has started to catch up with him. His eyes were wonderfully expressive in earlier films but by now they're expressionless (check his closeups if you don't believe me). Teamed for the third time with Alexis Smith, they make a nice romantic team that almost (but not quite) makes you forget about Olivia De Havilland. Paul Kelly plays the dapper villain who seems to be based on Bruce Cabot's character in DODGE CITY. In real life, Kelly earlier served a prison term for a fist fight that turned fatal. But the climatic showdown between Flynn and Kelly that we've all been waiting for fizzles out. Duking it out in the deserted Alamo (we have a feeling that Kelly can take care of himself even against Flynn), the fight suddenly ends when Kelly falls down and hits his head against a rock, presumably killing him. What kind of climax is this!!!!

1950's MONTANA is the third film in the set but Technicolor seems to be used to disguise the fact that this film is a 76 minute B-picture. By now, Flynn was starting to really look haggard and Warners was pulling the plug on his films (and for the first time loaning him out to other studios). The previous year's ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN was Warners' last effort to promote Flynn in a big budget film. His absences, lateness, and general lack of cooperation on JUAN convinced the studio to just let him serve out the remaining films in his contract in routine productions. By 1950, the studio was hiring Gary Cooper and James Stewart for big budget westerns that a few years earlier almost certainly would have starred Flynn. MONTANA reunited Flynn and Alexis Smith for the fourth and last time - she looks ageless while he has clearly seen better days.

The last film in this set is ROCKY MOUNTAIN, a better production than MONTANA but a far cry from DODGE CITY, VIRGINIA CITY, SANTA FE TRAIL, and THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON, which were made about a decade earlier. His co-star from most of those earlier films, Big Boy Williams, is with Flynn in ROCKY MOUNTAIN and there are moments when Williams almost seems to say to Flynn, "What happened - how did we wind up in this thing?" (OK, you can accuse me of having an overactive imagination.)

If you enjoy any of the earlier Flynn westerns, you will want to have this set although it unintentionally documents the decline of one of Hollywood's greatest stars. Finally, I can recommend the book, "THE FILMS OF ERROL FLYNN" by Tony Thomas, et al. Originally published in 1969, it is chock full of great photos, credits, etc. from all his films. My only complaint is that the authors are dismissive of many good Flynn films - but they made their judgments almost 40 years ago. A number of the Flynn films beyond the essentials (CAPTAIN BLOOD, ROBIN HOOD, SEA HAWK) have grown in stature through the years as it has become obvious that we will never see the likes of Flynn or the wonderful films that Warners produced for him ever again.

Could Have Been Better
While I'm glad to see another Errol Flynn collection released, this collection of Flynn's westerns is definitely a disappointment. While Virginia City and San Antonio are very worthwhile additions, Montana and Rocky Mountain pale in comparison, being little better than B movies made during the twilight years of Flynn's contract with Warner Brothers.

Virginia City was produced and released during Flynn's pinnacle years. As such, the production values are very high across the board. Having Randolph Scott in the movie was great casting. Unfortunately, Miriam Hopkins is way out of her element in this type of movie and there is no on-screen chemistry between Hopkins and Flynn. I don't know who had the idea of casting Humphrey Bogart as a half-breed Mexican outlaw. Bogart, being a true pro, tries to play the part with conviction. It would have made a lot more sense to have someone else play the part, or at least, not make it one where the character has to speak with a Mexican accent. Virginia City was very popular at the time of its release and is still a pretty good film to this day.

San Antonio was Flynn's first western after the war years and his first since They Died With Their Boots On. I believe I read somewhere that San Antonio was one of the top grossing films when it was released. Although the story's weak and the characterizations lack any depth, it's a pretty entertaining production featuring Alexis Smith and S.K. Zakall in the supporting cast. The featured song from the movie "Some Sunday Morning" won an Academy Award.

Montana was probably Flynn's weakest western. The story's lame, Flynn tried to a certain extent but this was a very ordinary western in terms of story, script and production. The only redeeming qualities were Alexis Smith in her final co-star appearance with Flynn and the Technicolor process which was surprisingly used.

Rocky Mountain had a better story and some decent moments. William Keighley, in his final directorial effort, got a understated, believable performance from Flynn. The supporting cast performed credibly and included Flynn's third wife, Patrice Wymore. Not a bad little western but certainly nothing like the spectacular productions which characterized Flynn's westerns prior to WWII.

Two Errol Flynn western movies which could and should have been included are Santa Fe Trail and Silver River. Both have superior production values and are indicative of Flynn's first-tier star status throughout most of the 1940's. Their exclusion is puzzling and highly disappointing. Substituting Santa Fe Trail and Silver River for Montana and Rocky Mountain would have made this colletion much stronger and more on a par with the two earlier Flynn Signature Series collections.

Santa Fe Trail had all the excellent production values of Virginia City. It was directed by Michael Curtiz, Max Steiner did the musical score, Olivia DeHavilland was the romantic interest, Ronald Reagan was Flynn's comrade-in-arms and romantic rival, Raymond Massey gave a convincing performance as John Brown and Alan Hale and Guinn "Big Boy" williams were along as Flynn's buddies, both on and off screen. The story and Flynn's performance weren't as good as in Virginia City but having Olivia DeHavilland in the movie with Flynn more than makes up for those shortcomings and helps make Santa Fe Trail a good movie nonetheless.

Silver River features one of Flynn's best acting performances. Flynn was reportedly excited about the script and the character he would portray and it shows on film. With Ann Sheridan as his co-star and Raoul Walsh directing, Flynn gives a thoughtful, provacative portrayal of a hardened, embittered veteran of the Civil War who's wrongfully dismissed from the service. The film chronicles his struggles to become a succesful businessman in the tough frontier world and win the love of Ann Sheridan. Unfortunately, the middle of the film really sagged with too much ordinary dialogue and not enough action. For its faults, it's still well worth watching, particularly for the strength of Flynn's performance.

In many respects, I feel Flynn's fans were short-changed. I'm sure some fans would feel it would have been preferable not to issue the westerns collection at all rather than have half the selections be sub-par and not reflective of Flynn's overall body of work in the western genre. All in all, though, The Errol Flynn Westerns Collection is not a bad collection but it would definitely have been better entertainment and value had it contained a better selection of films.