WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Steineded How sad is this?

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

jpdoherty Warner Bros. SAN ANTONIO just about passes muster as an entertaining western thanks, in no short measure, to the presence of its star Errol Flynn. Produced in 1945 by Robert Bruckner for the studio it was at least beautifully photographed in glowing Technicolor by the great Bert Glennon and stylishly enough written by Alan LeMay. Unremarkably directed by the pedestrian David Butler this was one of eight westerns to feature the great swashbuckler which began in 1939 with the hugely successful "Dodge City" and continued with even greater success later with "Virginia City" (1940), "They Died With Their Boots On"(1941) and finishing in 1950 with "Rocky Mountain". Flynn was one of the few non-American actors to be an acceptable western hero. A phenomenon that baffled Flynn himself no end and prompted him to refer to himself on one occasion as the 'rich man's Roy Rogers'.SAN ANTONIO is a thinly plotted oater. The story has Flynn as cattleman Clay Hardin trying to bring down baddie Roy Sturt (Paul Kelly) who is heading a syndicate of cattle thieves who have been raiding from herds all over Texas. Sturt also owns the local saloon in San Antonio where the newly arrived bar-room entertainer Jeanne Starr (Alexis Smith) performs and who Hardin immediately has the hots for. There is also great jealousy and mistrust between Sturt and his partner in crime LeGarre (The sinister looking Victor Francen) culminating in them both gunning for each other and pursued by Hardin into the hallowed shrine of the historic Alamo ruins standing in the town.SAN ANTONIO isn't a great movie at all and without Flynn would be totally forgotten. There is little or no action except for a well staged saloon brawl and a final chase sequence that ends with Flynn and Kelly slugging it out in a river. Here and there abysmal attempts at humour and comedy occur especially from the irritating S.Z.Sakall. And with the exception of the striking looking Victor Francen performances are routine. The characters are all cardboard cutouts who make it impossible for you to engage with them as with Paul Kelly and the teak-like Alexis Smith. Flynn, on the other hand, is the best in it. His boyish charm as appealing as ever. He also looks extremely handsome throughout the picture with his Stetson tilted to one side on his head, his well fitted figured-in three quarter length coat and his bone-handled sixgun slung across his left midriff just like a sword. Like few others in Hollywood the man could certainly present himself as a dapper elegant figure and that glint in his eye telling us he knew it. SAN ANTONIO is the kind of movie Flynn could do in his sleep but it remains one of his least liked pictures and alongside "Montana" (1950) is his weakest western. Best things about the film is the glorious colour cinematography by the master Bert Glennon and the wonderful score by the tireless Max Steiner. The great composer skillfully reused his title theme from "Dodge City" for the credits here and it worked perfectly well. And besides a sprightly Stagecoach theme there is also an Oscar nominated song "Some Sunday Morning" written by the studio's music director Ray Heindorf and sung in one scene by Miss Smith. Steiner interpolated the song into his score and used it for the film's softer moments.

Robert J. Maxwell There are these bad guys in 1870s Texas, see, led by the wealthy Paul Kelly and the underhanded Victor Francen from New Orleans. What they and their henchmen have been doing is rustling cattle by the horde, or by the herd, whichever you prefer. Then they run the stolen cattle across the Mexican border, rebrand them, and filter them back into the states to sell at a profit. Many honest ranchers and small cattlemen get shot up in the process.Errol Flynn was one of them, his ranch destroyed, his cattle driven off, and he himself shot full of holes. A friend, John Litel, seeks him out in his Hollywood-style Mexican village where he finds Flynn now completely recovered and in possession of a ledger that proves Kelly's guilt. Also, need it be pointed out, Flynn is as gay and cheerful as ever. Flynn and Litel now set out for Texas to see to it that Kelly and Francen pay their debt to society.The rest of the plot gets complicated. Alexis Smith, gorgeous in Technicolor, enters the picture along with S. Z. ("Cuddles") Sakall. The first is beautiful, the latter is less funny than silly, though the tastes of contemporary audiences may be responsible for that impression.Poor Litel is shot unawares by Francen. It does not come as a surprise. We know as soon as we meet his character that he is dead meat. The smoothly groomed miscreants steal the ledger or the diary or the MacGuffin or whatever it is -- the evidence. Flynn has to do a bit of shooting to get it back. He gets it back. The bad guys die. The rest of the good guys live.It's not a demanding film. It goes down like a double café latte mit Schlag. None of the characters is in the least ambiguous. We never feel sorry for a moment when the bad guys get it. And the good guys have no qualifying quirks. They're all good-natured heterosexuals. I kept wishing for some surprise -- maybe Flynn could open his closet and a copy of Pepys' diary would tumble out with all the ribald passages underlined. Anything.But, as it stands, the movie, though a bit slow, is enjoyable. The whole Warners factory was at work here. All the expected supporting players are present. The score is by Warners stalwart Max Steiner. How he could write so MANY scores for so MANY movies of different genres is a mystery. Flynn is fine as his usual casual self. He's casual even in action scenes. In the 1937 "The Adventures of Robin Hood," he interrupted a sword fight with the menacing Basil Rathbone to wisecrack. "Did I upset your plans?" Here, he faces down gunman Tom Tyler. They both draw and shoot, and Flynn asks wryly, "Something wrong, McClaine?" Tyler, by the way, then does a reprise of his pre-mortem performance in "Stagecoach." He drops one of his guns, turns and begins to walk slowly away, drops the other gun, takes a few more steps and drops dead.The superb photography is by Bert Glennon. Alexis Smith is merely decorative, but she IS decorative. S. Z. Sakall, a Hungarian, mangles the syntax of the English language and slaps his blubbery cheeks with his palms when he's frightened, which is most of the time, but his role is perhaps more dramatic than his persona can handle. I genuinely enjoyed the wardrobe and the art direction. San Antonio really looks glamorously Mexican. And the director has Victor Franken at varying times chewing on a tamale and what appears to be a soft taco. I've often wondered, though, about the livelihood of characters like Flynn's. He rode into Mexico wounded and without a centavo. He returns to Texas to correct the situation -- but he NEVER WORKS. He has multiple Western outfits, can afford to eat in what passes for fancy restaurants, carelessly tips a tiny Mexican messenger boy -- but he NEVER WORKS. Whatever his source of income is, that's the one I want.Flynn didn't have much of a career ahead of him after this movie but you'd never know it by watching him romp through this retrograde nonsense with such zest.

uwcharlie Unlike some of the other comments above, I will give this movie great marks for plot, main actors, character actors, story line, suspense, technical proficiency of the director and beauty of the scenery and sets. Admittedly, maybe not Errol Flynn's best, but nothing to be ashamed of either. I saw other comments that Alexis Smith dubbed her singing, don't know how that was known, but my opinion is that this was her own work. You never lose interest from start to finish. The colors in this Technicolor feature are the best I've ever seen of the time period. Great movie. I have it on VHS, would like to get it on DVD but it seems to have disappeared from the marketplace.

zardoz-13 The lavish 1945 Warner Brothers western release "San Antonio" with Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, Paul Kelly, and S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall qualifies as an above average frontier fracas, probably the last really top-notch oater that Flynn made before his career dried up in the late 1950s. Mind you, Flynn, Smith, and Sakall reassembled for Ray Enright's "Montana" in 1950. The chief asset of war-time western is Bert Glennon's glorious Technicolor photography. Check out the shots near the beginning as a horseman is silhouetted against a burnished gold sky and the night-time long shot inside the Alamo, these shots look dazzling even on my ancient 20 inch color TV. The action in this World War II era sagebrusher is fairly ordinary on cursory inspection until you've seen it a few times and you think about how anarchic things are in Texas that the hero is forced into exile in Mexico while the villains live things up in the lap of luxury in San Antonio. Flynn never made a movie where his heroic character was in such a bad way that he had to voluntarily leave America and conceal himself. Of course, in his incomparable "Captain Blood," he was wrongly imprisoned, but he didn't imprison himself. Flynn fans will enjoy his cheerful banter with co-star Alex Smith. Many feel that she was not as compatible with him the way that dainty little Olivia De Havilland was in their five films together. Actually, I think that the Smith & Flynn relationship is more even, because she projects a greater physical presence than De Havilland. In other words, Smith could go toe to toe with Flynn better than the diminutive Ms. De Havilland. The other outstanding thing about "San Antonio" is its Oscar nominated theme song "One Sunday Morning." This knock-out tune bolsters the movie and it improves with each viewing. The other Oscar nomination went to the art direction which the beautiful Technicolor lensing brings in fabulous detail. "San Antonio" ranks at the very least as an all around good looking western with a superb song, spectacular color photography, and Max Steiner's lively contribution to the orchestral score is unmistakable.The action opens with Texas cattleman Charlie Bell (the ever reliable John Litel) crossing the Tex-Mex border to root Clay Hardin (Errol Flynn) out of exile. As it turns out, Clay has been biding his time before he returns to Texas for a showdown with lead heavy Roy Stuart (Paul Kelly of "The Springfield Rifle") who is the chief architect behind a massive cattle rustling ring that has robbed and stolen thousands of dollars from Texas cattlemen. It seems that Clay liberated a tally book from one of Stuart's henchmen has all the dirty details. Charlie Bell warns Clay that the opposition is expecting him and wants to kill him, but threats of death and violence do not deter Clay Hardin. He tells Charlie to get him a ticket on the next stage to San Antonio. Of course, Charlie regards this as a brazen and unwise thing to do, but Clay goes ahead with it anyway. Meanwhile, two Stuart henchmen are waiting for our hero who stops off along the way to catch a ride on a different stagecoach, one chartered for a New Orleans entertainer Jeanne Star (Alexis Smith of "The Doughgirls") who is supposed to sing in Roy Stuart's saloon. Jeanne's likable but befuddled business manager Sacha Bozic (lovable flabby jowled S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall of "Casablanca") lined up the engagement through an old acquaintance of her Jeanne's Legare (shifty-eyed Victor Francen of "The Desert Song") who is partners with Roy Stuart. Along the way, Clay tangles with Stuart-sent gunman Lafe Williams (Tom Tyler of "The Adventures of Captain Marvel") and guns him down in a memorable shoot-out. The rest of "San Antonio" consists of Clay Hardin and Roy Stuart circling each other warily like a mongoose and a cobra in an arena that only one can exit alive. The action really gathers momentum after an exciting scene where Legare guns down Charlie Bell in a back ally and the shadow of Sacha looms over both. Legare threatens to kill Sacha if the funny little fat man utters a word. Meanwhile, Clay gets the mistaken notion that Jeanne set him up for Roy Stuart. Later, we get to see a massive saloon shoot-out on the scale of the saloon brawl in Michael Curtiz's "Dodge City." The eventful, hard-as-nails frontier action in an above-average script by "Little Caesar" scenarist W.R. Burnett and Alan Le May—best known for his novel "The Searchers" that became a John Wayne classic—offsets the antics of Cuddles. Anybody who knows anything about Warner Brothers movies from that age knows that a lot of Cuddles' dialogue sounds like something that Michael Curtiz would have said. When Cuddles spots a rider less horse, he turns to the stagecoach driver and proclaims, "There goes an empty horse." This line immortalized first in David Niven's autobiography about the time that he made "The Charge of the Light Brigade" with Flynn and Curtiz referred to bare-backed horses as "empty" horses. The dialogue turns out to be filled in loads of quotable dialogue. Cuddles' comic dialogue sounds almost as good as the Marx Brothers with lines like: "If you can't say nothing, don't speak." Kelly and Francen make excellent villains as does Tom Tyler at the beginning of the film. Let's not overlook those sexy costumes that Alexis flaunts her oh-so-hottie body in.You can't go wrong with "San Antonio."