Charles Starrett consistently made the Top Ten Cowboy list every year for a decade or so. Part of that was the fact that movies like his were Columbia's bread and butter and they knew how to turn out a smart-looking programmer on the cheap, even with a good singing act (here, the Sons of the Pioneers) and comic relief (Pat Buttram).
Mostly, though, it was because Starrett played a smart guy who led the story into complications that most B movies didn't explore. In this one, Ann Doran's brother has been killed, and Starrett has shown up just too late, so he conspires to help her save the ranch, using a spy and a song-and-dance to fool chief villain Dick Curtis. Is the plot too complicated to succeed? That's the sort of question most B movies didn't ask.
Fans of B Westerns will be happy to see Hank Bell with his unlikely mustache in a substantial role. Hank was in more than four hundred westerns in a career that stretched from 1920 through his death in 1950. No western would look complete without him.
Mostly, though, it was because Starrett played a smart guy who led the story into complications that most B movies didn't explore. In this one, Ann Doran's brother has been killed, and Starrett has shown up just too late, so he conspires to help her save the ranch, using a spy and a song-and-dance to fool chief villain Dick Curtis. Is the plot too complicated to succeed? That's the sort of question most B movies didn't ask.
Fans of B Westerns will be happy to see Hank Bell with his unlikely mustache in a substantial role. Hank was in more than four hundred westerns in a career that stretched from 1920 through his death in 1950. No western would look complete without him.