South of the Border (1939) Online

While Gene Autry was most famous for his singing, he became a very competent actor & horseman. He was the hero to millions of children & a role model who was very conscious of his public image in their eyes (he was a two-fisted drinker but most people didn't even know it). This film is one of his best, with lots of great songs, hard riding, & hundreds of blank cartridges. The scene where Gene leaps from Champ (his beautiful stallion) onto a speeding tanker truck, was filmed without a stunt double, Gene actually did the stunt himself, to the horror of the director (if Gene had been hurt or killed, everyone would've been out of work!). In another film (I forget which one) Gene did a leap from Champ onto a locomotive. He told me once that it came about the same way, he was supposed to stop & let the stunt double do it, but he just decided that he could do it, so he did. This film also stars Duncan Reynaldo (The Cisco Kid) as the leading lady's outlaw brother.

See if you can follow me on this. The U.S. Consul sends Gene down to Palermo, Mexico to stop a band of American renegades who want to overthrow the Mexican government. The bad guys are planting the seeds of revolution and are attempting to seize an oil refinery that will be instrumental in refueling submarines at a base they control. At the same time, Mexican rancher Diego Mendoza (Frank Reicher) must get his cattle shipped to market before the rebels have a chance to steal them, as pretty Lois Martin (June Storey) tries to smuggle two hundred thousand dollars into the country to help the revolutionaries. Seriously, if I hadn't kept notes while watching the picture I would never have been able to remember this stuff long enough to write this review. Not only that, but the film gets off to such a quick start that they cram in three songs and a runaway coach in just the first ten minutes!

Well at least I got this one out of the way. I've been watching Gene at noon on Sundays off and on for a couple of years now on the Encore Western Channel and it still amazes me how I keep on finding stories I haven't seen yet. But this one is just too far out for any semblance of rationality. Particularly with Mary Lee on hand wearing out the Daddy gimmick with Gene; it was just so annoying.

If you're going to tune into this one, make it for the songs because this one packs in a total of eleven tunes which makes the picture a candidate for the most songs in any Autry flick. That's a rate of one every six minutes which seems incomprehensible when you try to think about it, but Gene, Mary, Smiley and the Checkerboard Band get it all done before the story's over. Smiley lip synchs an Autry love song to Miss Martin and Mary Lee yodels, so those are a couple of new and different elements if you're catching up on Gene's pictures.

Even though Gene comes through at the end to stop the bad guys, the story doesn't have a completely happy ending. One of his goals at the outset was to convince his sweetheart Delores' (Lupita Tovar) brother to stop working with the rebels. In another picture, Duncan Renaldo might have made the switch from an outlaw to a good guy but not this time. In fact he's gunned down by the federales at the finale, somewhat of a surprise for this viewer, but that wasn't the worst. Returning to reunite with his senorita, Gene learns that she's become a nun! Gene just couldn't win here without a home field advantage.