Treasury agent Pat Doyle (John St. Polis) is sent to investigate a counterfeiting ring in Wyoming but ends up getting kidnapped by gang leader Sharpe (Karl Hackett) instead. With Doyle’s daughter, Joan (Suzanne Kaaren), demanding that the government rescue her father and generating all sorts of bad publicity for the Secret Service, the decision is made to send in Tim Hayes (Tim McCoy). Hayes, who will be working undercover, is selected because he’s not a “city boy.” He’s a cowboy, through and through. If you want to tame the west, you have to send a cowboy.
Phantom Ranger is a low-budget, 56-minute western from Monogram Pictures. The plot is nothing special but the film itself still interesting because it’s a western that takes place in the 1930s. Tim Hayes may ride a horse and wear a cowboy hat but he also works in a Washington D.C. office building and he interacts with a woman dressed like a flapper. In this movie, the frontier has not caught up with the modern world but the modern world has also forgotten what life is like away from civilization.
The movie has the usual collection of B-western stalwarts. Karl Hackett, John Merton, Charles King, Frank Ellis, Herman Hack, and Horace B. Carpenter are all present and accounted for. Tim McCoy, a former rodeo performer and army officer, plays the hero and brings a lot of natural authority to the role. McCoy was not only one of the first western heroes but he was also one of the best.
There’s no phantoms to be found in Phantom Ranger. It’s still a good western.
Through the Shattered Lens 