​New restorations bring color back to vintage westerns

Last month Kino Lorber released a pair of Randolph Scott westerns to Blu-ray, recently restored with some difficulty to their original Cinecolor hues. Cinecolor was a less-costly alternative to Technicolor, based upon two complementary colors instead of three primary colors. It was still relatively rare for lower-budget movies to shoot in color 65 and more years ago, and later reissues by other distributors were often in black-and-white. The camera negatives had been lost over the years but black-and-white protection positives of the two color records survived, each with its own issues that had to be dealt with when recombining them into color.

Neither film may be particularly special, but both are good solid B-western entertainment, and at only 95 and 81 minutes they play very well together as a double-feature. Both were produced independently by Nat Holt and directed by Edward L. Marin for 20th Century Fox release, and feature veteran character actor Victor Jory as the villain, although in two very different sorts of characterizations. Both films also include a slightly feminist subtext with strong, independent-minded female characters central to much of the action.

The plot of “Canadian Pacific” (1949) is the struggle to construct a transcontinental railroad across Canada, especially to unite the isolated west-coast British Columbia with the rest of the Dominion east of the Rockies. Randolph Scott is railroad surveyor and trouble-shooter Tom Andrews, who plans to retire after this assignment so he can marry Cecille (Nancy Olson in her first major film role), daughter of a Metis mountain fur trapper.

However, the rest of the Metis settlement and local Indian tribes are being riled up by the scheming Dirk Rourke (Victor Jory), a trader who sees the railroad as a threat to his trading post monopoly as well as their traditional way of life. He also sends men to sabotage the construction and sow discontent among the workers, besides inciting the tribes to attack the railroad camp.

In the midst of all this, the railroad’s new doctor (Jane Wyatt) arrives to provide even more dramatic tension with her strongly pacifistic views, besides introducing some romantic tension and a tentative love triangle in Tom and Cecille’s relationship. Crusty old explosives expert Dynamite Dawson (J. Carrol Naish) helps keep things moving both in periodic violent intervention and in smoothing out personal misunderstandings. There are several climaxes and subclimaxes, and as expected in a B-western, everything naturally ends with a satisfying resolution.

The Cinecolor cinematography adds a colorful appearance to the Canadian mountain location scenery, with attractive flesh tones and a pleasant orangey-blue dominated palette with plenty of good browns but no yellow and a dull brownish-blue that effectively simulates pine-tree green.

Kino’s Blu-ray has a very good HD transfer of the new restoration with a sharp image and decent if not particularly impressive audio. Besides an HD trailer (in black and white), the main bonus feature is an hour-long documentary detailing the restoration process. There are also HD scans of the first 20 minutes of an old 16mm Cinecolor print for comparison, and of an 8mm black-and-white silent home-movie abridgement.

CANADIAN PACIFIC on Blu-ray – Movie: B / Video: A- / Audio: B / Extras: B

After another Holt-Marin-Scott-Jory Cinecolor western, the same team came out with “The Cariboo Trail” (1950). It was also filmed on mountain locations, with California and parts of Colorado passing for Canada.

Characters tend to be somewhat more developed and interesting than in “Canadian Pacific,” but the plot largely follows the familiar western formula. This time Randolph Scott is Jim Redfern, a small-time Montana rancher who drives his steers northward to British Columbia in hopes of starting a much larger ranch with his buddy Mike Evans (Bill Williams) and their Chinese cook Ling (Lee Tung Foo). Mike, however, is more interested in searching for gold in the same area, which had seen a gold rush some years before.

On the trail they join up with a grizzled old prospector called “Grizzly” (George “Gabby” Hayes in his final big-screen role). Victor Jory plays Frank Walsh, a local land baron who owns most of a town and the surrounding land. He has his men steal Jim’s entire herd, instigating plenty of violent confrontations throughout the course of the movie, and a falling-out between Jim and Mike.

Walsh is also unsuccessfully romancing the town’s saloon owner, Francie Harrison (Karin Booth), who quickly falls for Jim once he arrives and demonstrates his willingness to stand up against Walsh. This leads to still more fights and shootings, as well as another Indian attack arranged by Jory’s character.

Along the way we get to see a young Mary Stuart as Grizzly’s niece, in her final movie role before going on to star as Jo in the TV soap opera “Search for Tomorrow” for the next 35 years. As usual, there are a couple of interesting twists but everything ends pretty much as expected for the good guys and the bad guys.

Picture quality on Kino’s Blu-ray is quite good, although the Cinecolor seems to have more of a dull brownish cast than the color in “Canadian Pacific.” Still the color adds significantly to enjoyment. Audio quality is adequate but shows its age.

Bonus features again include a documentary on the color restoration, this time about a half-hour long and making references to the “Canadian Pacific” restoration. Again there is an HD scan of an old 8mm black-and-white home movie abridgement, and a black-and-white trailer scanned from 35mm in HD.

THE CARIBOO TRAIL on Blu-ray – Movie: B / Video: A- / Audio: B+ / Extras: B-