True Action: Manhunt for Claude Dallas

Americans love their freedom. The United States was born out of not wanting someone else telling us what to do and there continues to persist an attitude of telling the government to keep their nose out of our business. With that in mind, it is no surprise when an individual who fights for their right to be free, even after committing a serious crime, can be exalted to folk hero status. That is exactly what happened to Claude Dallas, a man who loved the beauty of the American West and wanted to live off the land, fish and game laws be damned. In 1986 the tragic and True Action tale of Claude Dallas was brought to the small screen with the television movie Manhunt for Claude Dallas.

• True Life Beginnings – Claude Dallas was raised in the midwest, but when he graduated from an Ohio high school in 1967 he made his way out west because he had a love for the old west. Dallas worked on a ranch in Oregon, but the government took their first shot at Dallas. The draft board came after Dallas because he failed to respond to his draft notices sent to Ohio. The draft dodging chargers were eventually dropped because there is no way Dallas could have known about the draft letters, but it still didn’t give a good impression of government and law enforement to Dallas.

• True Life Setup – Dallas moved on to live off the land in and around southern Idaho and northern Nevada. The problem with living off the land is that you need to hunt animals for sustenance. The problem with hunting animals is that there is a hunting season.  Officer Bill Pogue of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game took his job serious and did not take kindly to poachers and takes his job very serious. When Pogue hears about Dallas on the land of Eddy Carlin, and after Carlin tells Pogue that Dallas is ready for any confrontation, there can only be one outcome.

• Movie Beginnings – Manhunt for Claude Dallas begins with Claude Dallas already living off the land in Idaho. Matt Salinger of Captain America (1990) fame plays Claude Dallas with a quiet reserve that makes it easy to root for a man who will soon kill two Fish and Game officers. We first meet Dallas as Jim Stevens (Brent Spiner) is coming to spend the weekend with Dallas. Two more individuals are soon on their way, Officers Bill Pogue (Claude Akins) and Conley Elms arrive to make sure there is no illegal hunting happening. Claude Dallas doesn’t take well to being told what to do and in his words shoots both officers in self-defense. That’s right, Manhunt for Claude Dallas has room for only one Claude and Akins gets shot in the first ten minutes. Jim Stevens didn’t really see the initial shots, but he did see Dallas use his rifle to finish off the two men execution style.

• Movie Setup – The use of flashbacks gives the audience a chance to see Claude Dallas as he first makes his way to Oregon as Dallas becomes a buckaroo (as an aside I have never heard the term buckaroo used as much in any movie before and that includes The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension). The flashbacks are a excellent narrative device to show the people and actions that affected Dallas (and allowed Claude Akins to show back up) and are intertwined with the contemporary Dallas trying to avoid law enforcement. The most important aspect for Manhunt for Claude Dallas is that it gives the audience to experience some top notch co-stars including Rip Torn as Sheriff Nettleton, Frederick Coffin (Memorial Day) as Sheriff Weston, Pat Hingle as George Nielsen, Beau Starr as Ed Pogue and even the first ever role for Annette Bening.

• True Life and Movie Endings – The action and suspense in both real life and in the movie deal with Claude Dallas going on the run after the two killings. Some friends of Claude Dallas assisted with him getting away, and there wasn’t much cooperation with law enforcement because of the local populace’s admiration for Dallas. The actual manhunt for Claude Dallas lasted 15 months after he was captured in Nevada. Manhunt for Claude Dallas features the most action packed scene during a chase when the law finally gets a bead on the whereabouts of Claude Dallas thanks to some so called friends ratting out Dallas for the reward money. During the trial, the Dallas defense team expertly convinces the jury that Dallas was acting in self-defense and he is only found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. The judge wasn’t about to let a man who killed two Fish and Game officers get off that easy and sentences Dallas to the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. Amazingly, Dallas managed to escape from prison was on the run for another year before being capture again. It is at this point where true life and Manhunt for Claude Dallas separate.

• Claude Dallas Today – Manhunt for Claude Dallas ends with Dallas escaping from prison and uses some on screen text to explain that he was captured a year later. Mostly due to the fact that Manhunt for Claude Dallas came out in 1986, the on screen text states Claude Dallas was still in prison.  The true life outcome was that Claude Dallas was released in 2005 after serving 22 years in prison. The man who just wanted live in the west like the stories and movies he saw as child ended up becoming just as famous and sort of an anti-hero himself.

Several books, documentaries (including the informative episode of FBI: The Untold Stories which has interviews with some of the real participants, a good chase scene, and… Diedrich Bader) and of course a nice little television movie were beginning to show up in the mid 1980s. The book Outlaw by Jeff Long was used as the basis for Manhunt for Claude Dallas and the movie is faithful to the book. The story of Claude Dallas as presented in Manhunt for Claude Dallas is an amazing tale about the attitudes and lifestyle of a certain population of American and does not need to stray from the true life facts to be entertaining. No matter what your beliefs are about the real Claude Dallas you could do a lot worse than watching Manhunt for Claude Dallas.