BAD BASCOMB

title: BAD BASCOMB
year: 1946
cast: Wallace Beery, Margaret O'Brien, Marshall Thompson
rating: **

A Western involving a few salty marauders who happen upon a stagecoach-circle with woman of slain soldiers, and one little girl, played by Margaret O'Brien, who ends up melting the lead baddie's heart. Scenes with Wallace Berry and child actress O'Brien (around six years of age) are the creepiest thing I've witnessed in an "old movie" as O'Brien keeps telling Beery she wants to marry him, and in one particular scene they are off in the brush away from the camp, and she teaches him how to kiss. I realize this film, about the old codger being changed by the cute little girl, has its heart in the right place: but the beat is highly irregular. Other than that the story moves along pretty decently, although seems quite stagy and claustrophobic overall.