Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Dreadfully Boring

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The Maverick Queen (1956)Well Barbara Stanwyck made a lot of Westerns in the 1950s, and most of them are routine stuff, and in them she has often limited if still central roles. This is a great example. She's in the film much less than her co-stars, and the story is a patched together set of common problems--the cattle rancher faces trouble from the cattle rustlers and a hero has come to town, and a little love is going to cross the frontier.The key difference in all these movies is that Stanwyck plays a strong, sometimes very very strong, woman. That alone makes them watchable. But don't expect "The Maverick Queen" to hold up critically or even hold your attention fully. The plot even has so many little confusions, on purpose. you have to pay close attention (and show some patience) to keep in on track.For one example, without giving too much away, the main man, played well by Barry Sullivan, is new in town, and he says he's Jeff Younger, a famous gunslinger. This suite Stanwyck's character perfectly--she runs the tavern but also the general racketeering schemes for the province. But then another man arrives in town and says he's Jeff Younger. Hmmm. Along the same lines, the pretty young girl in town is another strong woman, clearly a good one, and her sidekick is a lazy loaf but a good guy, until you see him start telling people things he shouldn't. And so on. These are really great plot twists but they aren't handled with total clarity or given the impact you might expect so the movie totters a bit.The director, it might be noted, is Joseph Kane, who pretty much only did Westerns, over a hundred of them, and he probably didn't distinguish one from another very well. He's not even trying to create a masterpiece on the small budget this small studio gave him. (It's a full color Republic Pictures production, and there are corners cut.)The one other interesting side note is the presence of Sundance as a major character (and Butch Cassidy as a very minor one). Of course, history is thrown to the wind on what happens to Sundance, so never mind that . (Watch the Newman/Redford one for the classic outline.)And Stanwyck? She's strong, and I mean physically tough, and she busts out with good acting in a few scenes. But she, too, seems to realize she's doing routine stuff.A final note--I saw this on TCM, and for the first time in twenty years of watching movies there I saw one that was not shown full screen. Yes. A shame. It's a wide wide screen enterprise and it uses an unusual system called Naturama, and it was the first Republic movie to use it. It was really just a compatible anamorphic widescreen system like Panavision, but for some reason it was cropped (given the awful "pan and scan" treatment) for this release. That didn't help with the fluidity of the filming, or the appreciation of the big landscape of Colorado so proudly announced in the opening credits.Should you see this? Not really. There are better Stanwyck Westerns, and better Westerns. And better movies.

Considering that "The Maverick Queen" was the first widescreen film from Republic Studios, you'd think it would be a prestige picture. Well, apart from sporting a once A-list actress Barbara Stanwyck (who looks pretty awful in color under such heavy makeup), it was far from a memorable movie.The film is about Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall gang. It seems they are being aided, covertly, by a lady (Stanwyck) who runs a business called 'The Maverick Queen'. When a guy comes into town saying he wants to join the gang (Barry Sullivan) and that he's Jeff Younger (of the famous Younger gang), Stanwyck goes gaga for the guy and blindly pushed him into a role in their next robbery. At first the ruse seems to work--until the REAL Younger shows up--then it sure looks as if Nelson's days are numbered. Will his new sweetie just stand back and let the gang do him in or will his sheer manliness win her over to his side--getting her to give up EVERYTHING she's ever worked to create?! Well, in real life, the answer would clearly be NO--but this is a movie after all! As the film progressed, I kept feeling like I've seen this film before. The notion of a butch female gang leader falling for a lawman and betraying the gang is very old and very clichéd--and other actresses like Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford (among others) made similar flicks....VERY similar flicks. Additionally, in a scene when there is a showdown and Nelson's character attacks Sundance, not once does Sundance call out for help from his gang who is waiting outside!! Because of bad writing there is never any suspense in the film if you've seen many westerns--you know what MUST happen with each and every cliché--especially the ending. The bottom line is that although this movie looks nice with its location shoot and color widescreen print, the story itself is pure B-movie all the way. It's pretty indistinguishable from a Roy Rogers or Gene Autry film the studio made in previous years--films which cost a whole heck of a lot less to make and with much more modest pretensions. Passable entertainment but no more and perhaps my score of 5 is a bit generous.Please note: In the film, Sundance is killed. However, in real life he died in South America--thousands of miles from where the film is set! Historical accuracy....who needs it?!

Tough gal Kit Banlon opens a hotel and saloon out in frontier Colorado that soon becomes a haven of gamblers and gunfighters. With notable patrons being none other than Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Fighting off the romantic advances of Sundance, Kit's life gets more interesting when she becomes attracted to a relative of the Younger Brothers' outlaw posse. Or is he? Whispers in the shadows point to the handsome stranger perhaps being a law man on the trail of the infamous Wild Bunch. Kit could very well be jeopardising much more than a unfulfilled romance if she falls in with the stranger?Directed by the genre prolific Joe Kane and based upon on the novel written by Zane Grey, The Maverick Queen is something of a wasted premise, with all the elements are in place for a twisty psychological Western. The story is a sound one, with the characters at first glance looking to have potential for gusto and intrigue, but it just doesn't come together as a whole, either through one dimensional male characters or through lazy writing, it ultimately ends up being a damp squib. A squib briefly sparked by Barbara Stanwyk (Kit) in one of her later career tough feminine roles, and a pretty as a picture Mary Murphy who also gets to show a bit of spunk. But the girls can't carry the picture alone...Barry Sullivan was a safe and amiable actor, he however was far from being a leading man who was able to carry a picture up front, thus here as the leading protagonist he struggles badly as he tries to make the tepid Kenneth Gamet screenplay work. It's a surprisingly weak adaptation from the man who wrote The Flying Leathernecks and the hugely enjoyable Coroner Creek, while Kane himself has to take some of the blame for letting the film plod when it should be zippy. There's a nice kicker in the finale - something that saves the piece from rotting at the bottom of the "B" Western barrel, but sadly it's just not decent enough to warrant a second glance - rendering as fact that both Stanwyck and the audience deserved better. 4/10

In The Maverick Queen you will find the characters of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid in support of Barbara Stanwyck. But Howard Petrie and Scott Brady aren't anything like Paul Newman and Robert Redford. You won't hear Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. And Brady as Sundance is a sexual predator as well.The Maverick Queen was made in the last days of Republic Pictures which was the home of the B movie cowboy. Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and a bunch of others toiled there for a while. The last of them, Rex Allen, had just finished doing his series. The films that these guys did were now being made for television. Something like The Maverick Queen would never have been made at Republic ten years ago.This movie is about sex, it concentrates on Barbara Stanwyck who operates against her own interest because of her attraction for Barry Sullivan. She's tired of the Sundance Kid as a lover, in fact she urges him to take a bath before putting the moves on her again when we first meet her.As for Brady when it becomes obvious about her attraction to Sullivan, he tries to kill Stanwyck and later attempts to rape Mary Murphy. Rape was not something found in Republic westerns. The film is directed by Joseph Kane who directed a ton of films there with Autry, Rogers, and the rest of the cowboy stars. The Maverick Queen boasts some nice location photography and was the first of Republic's films to be filmed for the wide screen. It's based on a Zane Grey novel and I never would have dreamed that Grey would have written anything like that. Joni James also sings the title song over the credits and I liked her rendition of it.Unfortunately The Maverick Queen should have been done when the Code was finally done away with, a lot of plot holes might not have occurred. It also should have been in the hands of director not from the grind 'em out school of B westerns. It might have been a whole lot better.