This Paramount version/ripoff of OKLAHOMA!/ANNIE GET YOUR GUN/CALAMITY JANE isn't all that unusual or innovative. The marketing and intro comments may be there to salvage what is really a pretty bad movie musical western shot on a soundstage and like a live TV show. I don't find the use of the background cyclorama, lit in various scenes with yellow, or pink, or red, or....all that innovative. As noted, it looks more to me like a movie that was produced on a TV budget: All soundstage, with minimal sets backed by the lighted cycs! (Compare to NEW FACES (OF 1952). The actors come off reasonably well, though. And this style was much better realized when Paramount shot LI'L ABNER in 1959. Of couorse, this movie suggests the often repeated question: "what were they thinking?"
Review of Red Garters
