The Mine Wolf

Ruth Roman was TCM's Star of the Month back in November, and once again that gave me the chance to record several movies I hadn't seen before. One of those movies is coming up on the TCM schedule, so I watched it now to do a review on: Barricade, which airs tomorrow (January 10) at 3:00 PM.

We don't see Roman at first; instead we see Dane Clark. He's playing Bob Peters, a man running from the law, with a saddlebag draped over his shoulder. Bob may be a crook, but he's no dummy, and is able to evade the posse and make it to the next town. But there's a mine foreman there gathering supplies for the mine some ways out of town. The mine can always use more workers, and as a mining camp there's room and board included. Bob, needing a way out, takes this lifeline.

Showing up in town at the same time is the stage, with a pair of passengers. Aubrey Milburn (Robert Douglas) is a bit mysterious, while the lady, Judith Burns (Ruth Roman, not as if you couldn't figure that out), is quickly revealed to be a convict escaped from a women's prison back east in Indiana. She tries to get Milburn to cover for her when she discovers the sheriff has her picture. He doesn't, and Judith tries to escape by taking the stagecoach, with Milburn hopping aboard. Neither of them knows how to drive it, and it predictably crashes, injuring both of them substantially.

The wagon with the mine foreman shows up and since the two aren't dead, takes both of them aboard and brings them to the mining camp. The mine is owned by Boss Kruger (Raymond Massey), and he'll let Milburn stay to recuperate, at least if he pays his way by working. With a broken ankle, it's only kitchen work for him, which is degrading in the other men's eyes. As for Bob, he'd like to move on, but there's only back to town, as the other way is 35 miles of desert. Kruger takes Bob on as a demolition expert, to set of the charges to clear out more mine.

Boss Kruger fairly quickly reveals himself to be one nasty man. To an extent, he has to be in this harsh environment. But you get the sense that he was amoral even before getting to the mine, as he's willing to hire any sort of bad guy trying to escape his past -- indeed, Kruger won't question the men's pasts. There's more to it however, which sets off Milburn's curiosity, as he goes snooping around in Kruger's quarters on the premise of cleaning them. There was a dispute between Kruger and a putative co-owner some time back, and for the time being, Kruger seems to have won. But the co-owner is bound to show up again sometime, Kruger may well have hired these men to be the muscle defending the mine.

There's also the question of what's going to happen to Bob and Judith. After all, Barricade was released in 1950, and the Production Code was still most definitely in force back them. Perhaps they can come up with some deus ex machina to pardon both of them, or maybe they can die heroically trying to save to good guys from the bad guys.

Barricade is based on the Jack London story The Sea Wolf, which had already been made into a memorable movie a decade earlier. Obviously, there's no sea here, but I think it's a good decision to change the location so that it wouldn't bring up too much comparison to the earlier movie. Then again, one can't help but make the comparison. Barricade doesn't come up to The Sea Wolf, but it's not a bad little western programmer. You could do better, but you could do a lot worse.