Jethro Compton's Frontier Trilogy: The Rattlesnake's Kiss

Jethro Compton
Jethro Compton
C nova

The Rattlesnake's Kiss

The final episode of Jethro Compton's Frontier Trilogy features a fiendishly complicated plot, possibly too much so for its own good.

As the only constant through the plays, Chris Huntley Palmer’s blind Father Manoah finally steps centre stage.

He is visited by a US Marshall seeking a long-lost member of a gang more like a Mafia Family than a bunch of Wild West outlaws.

The action then steps back in time to show the back-story. This involves Mason, who had been the right hand man of the Godfather then tried to escape.

The 70-minute drama is spiced up by the old man’s passion for using snake venom as an ultimate weapon but also revenge where the tables are turned with devastating consequences.

Add in rivalry over Mason’s wife, a woman with a dark past and a strange way of showing her love, plus hidden family connections that just keep emerging from the woodwork, and you have a taut drama.

While The Rattlesnake's Kiss can veer too close to unintended comedy at times as revelations keep emerging, this is still a strong piece of genre entertainment.

Reviewer: Philip Fisher

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