When you think of a possible plot for the film The Return of Jesse James, your mind probably takes you in two different directions: either Jesse comes back to life, or his son follows in his father's footsteps. If you rent this 1950 western, you won't see either. Instead, John Ireland stars as a random outlaw who gets taken in by the Younger gang and taught to use Jesse's tricks to fool stupid people into thinking he's come back to life twenty years later without having aged a day.
This really isn't that great, unless you're a John Ireland fan or you want to see Ann Dvorak still cranking out the movies 18 years after Scarface. It's fun to see Henry Hull in his third Jesse James movie, though. In the first two, he played the newspaper man who famously declares everyone should be taken out into the street and shot like dogs, and in this one he gets a promotion (with much more screen time). He's the head of the Younger gang, who recruits John Ireland to pose as Jesse James and join their group. In one hilarious line of dialogue (that I'm convinced was put in just for him) he does get to warn John that the posse will be after them, to "kill us like dogs". I'm surprised he was able to say the line with a straight face, but he's a pro.