Emma Tansey | Through the Shattered Lens

Clem Peterson (Richard Cramer) has a plot to force all of the ranchers in the valley to give up their land. He gives a phony land claim to Carson (John Merton), who presents himself as being a Mexican nobleman. In a situation like this, you need a singing cowboy and luckily, there’s one nearby. Fred (Fred Scott) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) get involved after their cattle are stolen by Clem and his men. Fred not only fights to save the ranchers but he also sings a song or two.

Singing cowboy films are always strange. Cowboys who ride horses and pull guns and get into fistfights should not also be tenors. Fred Scott looks convincing on a horse and he has one heck of a fistfight towards the end of the movie but he’ll also start singing at the drop of a hat and it just doesn’t feel right. John Wayne did a few singing cowboy films early in his career and he could usually pull it off. Fred Scott wasn’t much of an actor and had a forgettable screen presence. He had a good voice, though.

This film was produced by Stan Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy fame. Always read those credits. You never know who you might find.

Rancher Jeff Reynolds (Frank LaRue) used to be one of the good guys on the frontier but he’s recently changed. He fired all of his loyal ranch hands and instead hired a motely crew of outlaws. He’s buying up land and evicting the squatters who have been living there. About the only good thing he does is hire Lon Cardigan (Johnny Mack Brown) to be his new herd boss. Lon is engaged to Reynolds’s daughter, Bobbie (Claire Rochelle). With the help of Bobbie and comic relief cook Calico Haynes (Horace Murphy), Lon tries to figure out why Reynolds is now doing the bidding of the evil John Porter (Ed Cassidy).

The title is the most exciting thing about this movie, which is one of those old B-movies that puts the “creak” in creaky. There’s surprisingly little gunplay but there is a lot of horse riding. For a film that runs less than an hour, a surprising amount of it is just shots of people riding from one location to another. The horses’ hooves sound impressive on the soundtrack but it’s not exactly exciting. As always, Johnny Mack Brown is a convincing cowboy. It’s a good thing he looks like he knows what he’s doing when he’s riding a horse! The plot was standard B-western fluff. Johnny Mack Brown appeared in a ton of westerns and almost all of them seemed to feature the same range war. There are better Johnny Mack Brown movies out there. This one is for completists only.