Cimarron Strip (TV Series) The Last Wolf (1967) User Reviews

No place for the mountain men

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 30 March 2020]

The Cimarron Strip is getting crowded, way to crowded for the first white folks who ever came there. That would be the mountain men, the remnants of folks like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. They've been making a living lately killing off the wolves that feed on the cattle herds. But they've hunted them into extinction and now the men are a rowdy unhousebroken bunch.

Some know their time has gone. But others like Albert Salmi who unofficially leads the mountain men are too wild to settle down. He's who Stuart Whitman has to deal with and Whitman has a healthy respect for Salmi as a foe.

Some familiar western faces like Morgan Woodward, Robert J. Wilkie, Denver Pyle, and Stanley Clements are in this cast in this fine Cimarron Strip story.

The show is finally back on track...for now.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 26 March 2022]

While "Cimarron Strip" is set in Oklahoma, the show was filmed in California...which looks very, very different. However, "The Last Wolf" is about the most extreme example I've seen so far of the scenery looking nothing like Oklahoma...nothing. You see a lot of snow-capped mountains and desert...neither of which you'll find in Oklahoma! While Oklahoma does have a few mountains (particularly in the Cimarron area) they are much smaller and they just don't look like the huge peaks in the Inyo National Forest in California...and there's no desert. Still, while not at all accurate, the locations used in this episode are pretty.

This episode concerns a group of men who have long outlived their usefulness. Mountainmen who trapped were the first whites in the west...and later the farmers and cattlemen arrived. But by the time of this story, the wolves and buffalo are all gone and there really isn't anything for them to do to earn a living. But instead of facing this and changing with the times, the mountainmen fight everyone around them....and they are stirred up by Sam (Albert Salmi). Can the Marshall convince these folks to change with the times...or will they soon be at war with the cattlemen and ranchers?

Apart from the location looking nothing like Oklahoma, this is actually a pretty good episode...something I was thrilled with following several really bad episodes before this. Original and modestly compelling.