David Carradine's '60s Western With Robert Mitchum Is A Gem You Can Watch For Free

John Carradine was there to witness the moment John Wayne became a star in 1939's "Stagecoach." The actor portrayed Hatfield opposite the Duke's Henry, the Ringo Kid, and had a front row seat to director John Ford pulling Wayne's performance out of him by force in what remains one of the most important Westerns ever made. But John's sons were always going to struggle to match their father's Western filmography. David Carradine didn't get off to the best start when he starred in a short-lived 1960s Western series based on a much more successful film, "Shane." But he did appear in some solid prairie sagas in his time.

The younger Carradine left a successful Broadway production of "Royal Hunt of the Sun" to join the TV version of "Shane," but the 1966 series was sadly canceled after just 17 episodes. That was hardly his last experience in Westerns, however. Before landing the role that made him famous, Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine on ABC's "Kung Fu" in 1972, Carradine kept himself busy in several big screen Westerns, including 1967's "The Violent Ones" and 1970's "The McMasters." 1969 was a particularly busy year for the actor, who made "Heaven with a Gun," "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys," and "Young Billy Young."

The latter two projects saw Carradine work with star Robert Mitchum and director Burt Kennedy. Both films were met with a mixed critical reaction, and all three of Carradine's 1969 Westerns came and went without much fanfare. But that doesn't mean they don't have their charms, and in the case of "Young Billy Young," you can rediscover those charms for free right now on Tubi.

Burt Kennedy was an old hand by the time he came to make "Young Billy Young." The writer/director had been scripting Westerns since the late 1940s, beginning with radio before transitioning to TV and film. He wrote several screenplays for John Wayne's Batjac Productions in the 1950s, including the 1956 Westerns "Seven Men from Now" and "Gun the Man Down," before transitioning to directing in the 1960s and overseeing episodes of classic Western TV shows including "Lawman" and "The Virginian." His first Western film as director was 1961's "The Canadians," after which he also oversaw the John Wayne-led "The War Wagon" in 1967 and a little-known sequel to "The Magnificent Seven."

With that sort of experience, David Carradine was in safe hands. Though "Young Billy Young" wouldn't exactly launch him to superstardom, it did feature some serious talent including film noir legend Robert Mitchum and Angie Dickinson, who had broken through with her role in the Kennedy-penned "Gun the Man Down" more than a decade prior.

Carradine's other co-star was Robert Walker Jr., who played the title role of Billy Young, a young man who, after a deadly gunfight in Mexico, is taken under the wing of the new sheriff of Lordsburg, Ben Kane (Mitchum). Kane has a personal vendetta against outlaw Frank Boone (John Anderson), a vicious outlaw responsible for the death of his son. Carradine plays Young's partner, Jesse Boone, son of Frank, who deserted Young during their Mexican shootout. The two re-group in Lordsburg, where Kane jails Jesse to draw out Frank before Young busts him out without realizing what happened to Kane's son. Dickinson plays dance-hall girl Lily Beloit, who falls for Kane along the way.

"Young Billy Young" tells an oddly fragmented story. In addition to the revenge plot, romance, and Billy Young as mentee, we also get Jack Kelly as another bad guy who runs the town of Lordsburg. All in all it made for a decent enough late-'60s Western with a typically excellent turn from Robert Mitchum. But it was also fairly safe for 1969, a year which gave us some of the most legendary and seminal Westerns ever made. It's hard to imagine "Young Billy Young" holding audiences' attention when films like "The Wild Bunch" and "Once Upon a Time in the West" were hitting theaters. Perhaps that had something to do with the mixed critical reaction. The New York Times' Howard Thompson, for instance, wrote, "It looks, plays and sounds exactly like an episode—a middling one—in a weekly series."

Of course, today the movie is the kind of formulaic Western that appeals simply because it belongs to a golden age for the genre. But it's also worth watching for Mitchum's performance. Carradine does a decent job, too.

Burt Kennedy and Mitchum's second collaboration, "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys," debuted the same month as "Young Billy Young" to similarly mixed reviews. Carradine also appeared in "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys," and it was surely a more significant project for the young actor as it represented the first time he and his father, John Carradine, worked together. It was fitting that their director had been so instrumental in establishing Batjac in the 1950s, considering Carradine Sr. had been on-hand to witness the company's founder emerge as a Western icon back in 1939.