The Shadow Riders

Jeff Osterhage

Jesse Traven

**Selleck and Sam Elliott as brothers chasing Confederate renegades** While this is not a sequel to “The Sacketts” from three years earlier, it features five of the main actors of that 2-part film (aka ‘miniseries’), as well as the writers, Louis L'Amour and Jim Byrnes. Selleck and Elliott, as well as Jeff Osterhage, all wanted to play in another Western together and so they contacted L’Amour about it and this movie is the result. The events take place in the weeks after Lee surrendered to Grant. It’s a good enough Western, which is to be expected with such stalwarts involved in the production. There are similarities to John Wayne’s “The Undefeated” from thirteen years earlier, although this one is distinguished by ocean shore sequences, which brings to mind “One-Eyed Jacks.” Unfortunately, there are some glaring mistakes which can be attributed to the television budget, such as Kate (Katharine Ross) handing Jesse a modern lock blade knife on the beach. Then there’s the frivolous banjo-plucking score combined with too many smiles, which doesn’t gel with the grim nature of the life-or-death proceedings. Then, again, these guys just made it through the Civil War so maybe this adventure seems like child’s play by comparison. Petite blonde Natalie May is on hand as Heather, one of the females destined for slavery in Mexico. She had a memorable part in the post-apocalyptic “Parasite” released earlier the same year. It runs about 1h 32m and was shot in the Jamestown/Sonora area, which is a 2-hour drive southeast of Sacramento in north-central California; meanwhile the Baffin Bay, Texas, scenes were done at Santa Cruz, which is an almost 3-hour drive to the southwest from Jamestown. GRADE: B-