Return of the Cheyenne Kid (2002)

Posted on Jan 01, 2003 under Kidvid, Western |

Directed by David Stewart
Written and produced by Mitch Tomey
Starring
- Bob Wallace
- Kayla Mason
- Thomas Flipper
- Danny Absher

Cheyenne Davis, aka “the Cheyenne Kid,” was a popular character played by Western movie star Alfred “Lash” LaRue, so named because he was pretty darned good with a bullwhip. As the Cheyenne Kid in a whole string of Western flicks made through the 1940s, LaRue played a U.S. Marshall gone undercover in an outlaw gang, aided by his trusty and hirsute sidekick, Fuzzy (Al St. John). The Cheyenne Kid was an example of the old-fashioned Western Good Guy, true and trusty to a fault (though he preferred wearing all black instead of the traditional white).

“Most people call me ‘Fuzzy,’ but the missus calls me ‘Stinky.’”

In 2002, Virginia writer/producer Mitch Toney got the idea of updating the Cheyenne Kid with the help of Bob Wallace, a LaRue lookalike who similarly wielded a mighty fast bullwhip. He contacted local microbudget director David Stewart (director/star of Concealment, and star of 23 Hours), and together they put together a pilot for a proposed children’s series based on the character of the Cheyenne Kid. And I wish I could tell you I liked it.

I really do.

We jump right into the thick of the plot, as the evil Major Neal Price (Gene Palmer) and his two hired thugs meets Fuzzy (now played by Danny Absher, the spitting image of St. John) at his mine out in the woods, intent on forcing a sale of his deed. When Fuzzy refuses, they kidnap him.

Since Fuzzy was a former federal agent, local G-man Colonel Chance (Dudley Sauve) gets involved and sends a telegram to Cheyenne (Wallace), reputed dead, but merely retired. If there’s any case to bring him out of retirement, it’s the disappearance of his old partner. (By the way, look for director Stewart’s cameo as a sergeant in the Colonel’s scene.)

“Ooh! Ooh! A stick! Lookit me, I’ve got a stick!”

Once Cheyenne arrives, he goes out to explore Fuzzy’s homestead, and here he encounters a personification of Evil Made Flesh:

Fuzzy’s niece Lizzy (Kayla Mason) and nephew Tommy (Thomas Flipper). Yup, Fuzzy’s related to uppity tykes who set traps in the woods in case Fuzzy’s kidnappers come back for, you know, something. Thus, when Cheyenne comes riding through, his horse step on a tripwire, a treebranch knocks him from his saddle, and he finds himself tossed in a blanket and beaten with a stick. Ha! Comedy!

Their older cousin Frannie (Patricia Madigan) sets the record straight on Cheyenne’s identity before he has to resort to his whip. As is customary, the kids are as hard to shake as a buffalo turd on your cowboy boots, so they tag along as he checks out the mine, and then use the same trick on another rider — who just happens to be Cheyenne’s old friend, Wild Bill Hickock (John Powell). Fortunately, Wild Bill isn’t as easily set up in a Home Alone trap (I’d hate to think that my nation was built by men who could routinely be outsmarted by twelve-year-olds).

“I shore like this saloon better when it had FOUR walls.”

Wild Bill does have something to add to the quest, though; at the saloon in town, he saw two men drag in a supposedly “drunk” fellow who fits Fuzzy’s description. (Although given what the frontier was like, I’m sure that “average height, average build, full beard” was a pretty damned large demographic). He joins in the chase.

The bartender, by the way, is played by Eric Thornett (writer/director of 23 Hours, and kung fu-fighting Kevin Spacey clone in Lethal Force). He doesn’t get a chance to show some fu, but he does throw a mean knife. At a board, mostly, but I’ll take what I can get.

The good guys track the bad guys and get to have an ol’ fashioned fistfight with the major’s goons, but Fuzzy’s already been handed off to Jusn Jose, the meanest ethnic stereotype this side of the Frito Bandito. So the search gos on… presumably, into Episode Two, provided anyone likes the pilot.

I don’t mind the impulse to recreate a classic western; retro’s fine with me, especially when it isn’t done with that winking self-conscious attitude so hip these days. But it seems that Tomey and Stewart managed to recall only the bad parts of the old westerns, and filled in the gaps with new badness.

The music swells, and suddenly, we all burst into song! (Just kidding.)

Yes, old westerns had corny, whitebread heroes and dastardly villains, check. But the classics managed to carry it on charisma. Unfortunately, not a damned soul in the cast has either the acting ability nor the personal charm to rise above the dull, stilted dialogue. Bob Wallace sounds like the guy behind the paint counter at Wal-Mart, and the scene where he and similarly amateurish Frannie reunite will have you begging for tryout night at the local community theater. The “cute” child actors are screechy, as if no one trusted the mike to pick up their dialogue without belting it out. And Powell seems to be a few credits shy of graduating from the Wilford Brimley School of Faking It By Mumbling Through Your Big-Ass Moustache.

Conceptually, too, all of the wrong things are updated. The addition of cute tykes because, hey, it’s supposed to be a kid’s show, is completely wrongheaded; after all, the original westerns all appealed to kids without featuring kids. Remember Bonanza? Remember Gunsmoke? They got along fine without urchins underfoot all day. And updating it for today’s bizarrely violence-sensitive audiences means that not only does no one get shot, but Cheyenne and Wild Bill stop to teach the kids a Very Important Lesson about preferring to use their brains instead of their guns. (Excuse me, but that was your fists you used instead of your guns, and I don’t see that a clenched hand is necessarily more intelligent than a trigger finger.)

It looks like Tomey and Stewart had access to preserved historical sites for shooting, but even these prove problematical — a cabin on the frontier in the 1800s shouldn’t look a hundred years old, after all. And while Buckingham County, VA, is a beautiful backdrop for shooting, it doesn’t look anything like any place that’s within a day’s ride of the Mexican border. (I suppose it’s the reverse of the old problem of having a Kansas City that looked exactly like Bronson Canyon, or a Texas that looked like Southern Utah.)

“‘Clint Eastwood’? What kinda sissy name is that?”

To top it off, Stewart doesn’t seem nearly as sure of his camera work here as in Concealment, letting whole scenes be carried by a couple of uninteresting shots and the uninspired dialogue instead of through visual storytelling. I suppose I should take some comfort in the fact that this wasn’t Stewart’s baby to begin with, and therefore he wasn’t as personally impassioned by the story he was telling… Nope, that’s not much comfort.

I’ll just hope that this is just a “one-off” for Stewart (hey, everyone has them), and that his next announced project, entitled Confinement, takes the talents exhibited in Concealment and improves on them. As for the Cheyenne Kid, well, there’s really nothing wrong with letting that ride into the sunset be your last one.