I guess it's like an actor being typecast. He wanted to branch out from his frontier/Western stories but he had very little opportunity to do that, as you've mentioned numerous times before. I actually like Haunted Mesa, though I can see that there are people who wouldn't. It's too bad he wasn't allowed to branch out much until pretty much the end of his life, especially since you can tell from his early work that he could write well in many different genres.

peter