User Reviews

Cheyenne witnesses a murder: four horsemen whip a man to death; but the law refuses to act. Cheyenne's purpose is to take Paul Claiborn's son Gerald and return him to Paul. But the Claiborns are sons of the "true" South and have written off Paul as a traitor to the family and the South. The son refuses to go with Cheyenne so he will be leaving empty handed.

Ruth Francis, the wife of the man who was just murdered, was the one who had written Paul, and she begs Cheyenne to take the boy. But Cheyenne sees no way, and is heading back when he sees Gerald placing flowers on his mother's grave. He stops to give Gerald a pony, but the "Regulators" arrive to whip Cheyenne and warn him leave or die. Their leader is Ashley Claiborn, who obviously believes in violence regardless of father Vincent's claim real Southerners don't resort to violence.

The town is collapsing economically because the Regulators won't allow anyone to sell cotton to the North. Farmers are losing their land to auctions, but Cheyenne can't see the files to discover who is buying up the land. Shouldn't be too difficult to figure out which family is scarfing up all that land for pennies.

Cheyenne tries talking to Gerald to bond with the boy, and has some success. But Cheyenne returns to the town in an attempt to get to the land records which are now missing. Cheyenne is forced to take refuge with Ruth Francis who thinks quickly on her feet, and she is able to rescue Cheyenne. Ruth figures it has to be Ashley Claiborn who is buying up the land.

Cheyenne tries to rally the townspeople to stand up against Ashley and the Regulators, but the town is filled with cowardly men. In the end it is Gerald who discovers the truth, but Grandfather Vincent is in denial. When the Regulators attempt to tar and feather Cheyenne and Ruth, Vincent finally learns the truth but too late as his own son shoots him in the back.

P.S, When Cheyenne stands next to Ashley Claiborn you have to chuckle. Ashley is played by Adam West and Clint Walker towers over our Batman.

That turns out to be about as far from the truth as a man can get, but Vincent Claiborn truly believed it until the end, when his own son showed him how wrong he was.

Cheyenne Bodie rides into a southern town to see a group of masked men with whips galloping away from a body in the street. Neither the sheriff nor any of the other townsmen call it murder. Cheyenne is there to deliver a pony to his friend Paul's adolescent son, Gerald, and hopefully, to take the boy back north to be with his father, so he continues with his mission undeterred by the extreme lack of southern hospitality. The boy has been brainwashed by his Confederacy-entrenched grandfather and uncle, so refuses to go with Cheyenne or accept the pony. Then Cheyenne becomes another whipping boy, and that makes him very angry. Restrained and careful as Bodie has proven to be time and again even when provoked, men have learned the hard way not to make him very angry.

There are a number of side elements to this story, including the underhanded dealings of landgrabbers, the price of cotton, and the self-righteous morality police, all intertwined with the basic theme that some diehards, who call themselves "the Regulators," refuse to accept Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and they make their point in the most theatrical way possible. Never mind; Cheyenne Bodie has faced bigotry, greed, and violence before, but it hasn't stopped him yet. It takes a mob with a tar-and-feather mentality to bring things to a head. Clint Walker without a shirt stops them dead, but that might have been more for the viewing audience than for the onstage players.

The cast is good if you discount some of the bogus southern accents. John Litel plays the patriarch of the Claiborn family, a "true Southern gentleman" who really doesn't believe in the violence, even when he learns too late that the ringleader of it all is his own devious son, Ashley. Batman-in-waiting Adam West is not quite the heroic figure when sharing screen time with Clint Walker. Jean Byron is the widow of the man killed in the beginning, the local schoolmarm who cares deeply about young Gerald Claiborn and hates to see his mind so corrupted by his uncle, Ashley. It's a good thing Cheyenne Bodie came into the boy's life when he did, just in time to show him what a real man looks, acts, and sounds like. In the end, Gerald is reunited with his father, and Cheyenne looks on with satisfaction for another mission accomplished.