Blood River ** (1991, Rick Schroder, Wilford Brimley, Adrienne Barbeau, John P Ryan) – Classic Movie Review 12,923

Rick Schroder (born April 13, 1970).

The 1991 film Blood River is a mild and moderate TV Western, starring Rick Schroder and Wilford Brimley, and based on a screenplay by John Carpenter written for John Wayne.

Director Mel Damski’s 1991 Western film Blood River is a mild and mediocre MTV-style television oater, based on a tricky screenplay by film-maker John Carpenter, who tells the ho-hum yarn of Jimmy ‘The Kid’ Pearls (Rick Schroder), a rootless tearaway on the run after a killing, who is taken under the wing of Wilford Brimley’s salty curmudgeon, US Marshal Winston Patrick Culler.

Jimmy ‘The Kid’ has killed rancher Henry Logan (John P Ryan)’s son and two other men on finding they murdered his parents for their land. Logan is after vengeance and ‘The Kid’ hides in the mountains, where he meets old trapper Winston Patrick Culler, who becomes his protector and travelling companion. But Culler is helping him for a reason.

The most welcome cast give involving performances, and their acting and muscular handling from director Damski pump some purpose into this pedestrian jaunt through the frontier badlands. John P Ryan, Mills Watson (as Logan’s man Jake) and Dwight Mcfee (as Logan rider Squints) are a good set of villains.

The cast are Ricky Schroder [Rick Schroder] as Jimmy ‘The Kid’ Pearls, Wilford Brimley as US Marshal Winston Patrick Culler, Adrienne Barbeau as Georgina, John P Ryan as Henry Logan, Mills Watson as Jake, Henry Beckman as Sheriff Webber, Dwight Mcfee as Squints, Don S Davis as Congressman Adams, and Jay Brazeau as Hotchner.

Carpenter wrote the script in 1971 as a feature film starring John Wayne. People at Batjac, Wayne’s company, read it in the mid 1970s and hired him to do a rewrite but Wayne was getting too old and became too ill to do it.

Ah, yes, what might have been. Wayne met Ron Howard at a party after the release of his last film The Shootist (1976) and told him: ‘I have this movie for the both of us. It’s you and me or nobody.’ Howard has said that one of his great regrets is John Wayne not living to do this movie. Ricky Schroder of course plays the part Wayne intended for Howard and Wilford Brimley plays the part meant for Wayne. The casting is canny, and there is screen chemistry there between Schroder and Brimley.

Though American, the film was shot in Calgary, Alberta, in June 1990 and premiered on CBS television on March 17, 1991. The cinematography by Robert M Baldwin Jr Gary B Kibbe makes it look mighty handsome.

Adrienne Barbeau was married to John Carpenter from 1979 to 1984. Barbeau met Carpenter on the set of his TV film Someone’s Watching Me! in 1978.

Ricky Schroder debuted as a child actor in the film The Champ (1979), his career surviving both that and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980).

Wilford Brimley (September 27, 1934 – August 1, 2020).

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,923

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Ricky Schroder debuted as a child actor in the film The Champ (1979).