I was never much of a fan of B-movie maker Monte Hellman, who had a long if not exactly prolific career — 23 directing jobs between 1959 and the 2010s. “Two-Lane Blacktop” is a solid genre picture, and I’m hard pressed to think of another of his films I got much out of.

But Hellman was long associated with King of the Bs, producer, director and impressario Roger Corman, and that put him into business with the pre-fame Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton and here we are.

Hellman made a handful of films with those two future icons, and the Nicholson Western “The Shooting” might be the best known of his Jack team-ups. But a film they made concurrently with that one — same locations, some of the same cast and crew — is worth a look, as Nicholson turned out the script and concocted himself a starring role.

In “Ride in the Whirlwind,” Jack co-stars with Cameron Mitchell. But Stanton, billed as “Dean Stanton” and a dozen years into a not-yet-remarkable career, has his first chewy big screen role as an outlaw named Blind Dick.

Corman financed the two Westerns, Hellman directed both and neither, truth be told, is all that to look at. The minimal settings are properly dusty and rustic in “Whirlwind,” with arid Yanab, Utah serving as an iconic “The Way the West Looked in Most Westerns” location.

But Hellman’s experiment in trying to film inside or on top of a rolling stagecoach is “Blair Witch Project” shaky. The shoot-outs are competently-handled, and that’s as much praise as they warrant. Technically and artistically, “Whirlwind” is exactly what it looks like — an under-budgeted horse opera.

Nicholson conceived a spare story of three range-riding cowhands “headin’ South” for “Waco” from their last job up along the Snake River.

Vern, Wes and Otis (Mitchell, Nicholson and Tom Filer) are “just passin’ through,” rattlign off names of ranches where they’ve worked or might work, unaware that a gang of five led by Blind Dick (Stanton) but including Injun Joe (future Oscar nominee Rupert Crosse) just robbed a stagecoach, shot the shotgun rider and had one of their number gut-shot in the process.

Nothing is made of their “haul,” but they’re holed up in a range rider’s cabin when the trio ride up to regard them warily, share their whisky and figure out the quintet is lying about why they’re there.

“They don’t want no trouble, we don’t want no trouble” is about a far as that goes. The three will ride out at dawn, they figure. Only the sheriff and posse show up and lay seige to the cabin, trapping the three innocents in the process.

“We waren’t doin’ NOTHING, dammit,” Wes complains, to no avail. He and Vern are the only two to make it out of their encampment and up the canyon walls, struggling for safety on foot even though “This ain’t no country to be set afoot.”

They’re just climbing.

THEN where’ll we be?” “Someplace ELSE.”

Their struggle to escape doesn’t end as the posse “burns out” the cabin. They’ve already had one of their number gunned-down by shoot-first/ask-no-questions lawmen. And they’ve seen a lone hanging victim along the trail, another reminder of the brutal, unjust summary justice of the frontier.

They need horses from the first ranch they get to, and there’s no explaining “We waren’t doin’ nothin’, dammit” to the owner (veteran character player George Mitchell), his wife (Katherine Squire) or their fetching daughter (Millie Perkins, also in “The Shooting”).

The suspense of the hostage situation in the ranch house isn’t handled any better than the desperate shootout in that range cabin. But the players give us a sense of the stakes, even as they pause — at one point — to play checkers.

The script’s parameters are agreeably narrow, but Hellman’s ability to direct and edit into this a sense of urgency leaves a lot to be desired.

What’s fascinating is Nicholson’s reach for a kind of “True Grit” era authenticity in the speech, the slang and the nature of conversations amongst a trio of itenerant cowpokes. Wes remarks, when they stop to take hostages, a meal and hopefully horses, how laid back they’re being about their getaway.

“This is the ‘less work I done on a weekday since I was 4, ‘less’ I was sick.”

Cameron Mitchell, who’d go on to TV stardom via “The High Chaparral” a year later, notes how every crossroads, village and full fledged town in the West has a “Gold Nugget” saloon or hotel or what have you, “every place between here and Rosa’s Cantina,” a nod to Marty Robbins’ 1959 Country & Western hit, “El Paso.”

Stanton is all costume and stubble and screen presence. And the still boyish Nicholson, who’d take a few more stabs at the genre after becoming famous, looks as at home in the saddle and the sagebrush here as he’d later look in shades, sitting courtside at Lakers’ games or in the front row of the Oscars.

I’m still no Monte Hellman fan. But Nicholson, in front of and behind the camera, makes at least two of Hellman’s films intriguing sidetracks for any film buff who considers him-or-herself a Jack completist.

Rating: G, violence

Cast: Cameron Mitchell, Jack Nicholson, Millie Perkins, George Mitchell, Rupert Crosse, Katherine Squire and (Harry) Dean Stanton

Credits: Direted by Monte Hellman, scripted by Jack Nicholson. A Continental Distributing release, streaming on Shout! Factory, Roku TV, Youtube, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:22