The Culpepper Cattle Co **** (1972, Gary Grimes, Billy Green Bush, Luke Askew, Bo Hopkins, Geoffrey Lewis) – Classic Movie Review 2547

Director Dick Richards’s rousing 1972 Western stars the 17-year-old Gary Grimes as young farm-hand cowboy Ben Mockridge who buys a $4 pistol and talks tough trail boss Frank Culpepper (Billy Green Bush) into hiring him as a cowhand on his cattle drive to Colorado.

The trail is hard. Young Ben grows up fast as the dangerous journey is jam packed with adventure, ambushes and bloodshed, as he’s stuck with endless hard work, humble chores and his horse is stolen, in this rough, tough and persuasive coming-of-age Western.

Début director Richards paints an anti-romantic portrait of the West, as was fashionable at the time in the early Seventies. However, his visual style veers towards the pretty, perhaps a throwback to his background in making commercials.

The top quality of the character performances (Luke Askew, Bo Hopkins, Geoffrey Lewis), score (Tom Scott, Jerry Goldsmith) and cinematography (Lawrence Edward Williams, Ralph Woolsey) is what really counts here, lifting the movie to an impressive high for the Seventies Western.

Also in the cast are Wayne Sutherlin, John McLiam, Matt Clark, Raymond Gluth, Charlie (Charles) Martin Smith, Larry Finley, Bob Morgan, Jan Burrell, Hal Needham, Jerry Gatlin, Bob Orrison, Walter Scott, Royal Dano, Gregory Sierra, José Chavez and John Pearce.

Grimes retired from show business in the late Seventies and still lives in Los Angeles but has remained out of the public eye. ‘I got to the point where the work wasn’t up to the quality that I wanted. I’m very happy in my decision,’ he said in 2011.