zotch40

I see reviews of Hopalong Cassidy movies that denigrate them and refer to them as "average" and "another oater." well, to the kids that sat in the movies on Saturday afternoons and ate salty popcorn, they were great entertainment. They saw Hoppy travel to the mountains of South Texas and never gave a thought to the fact there are no mountains in South Texas. It's as flat as a pancake. The cactus and mesquite trees abound there and not the Joshua trees from California such as you see in Texas Masquerade. None of that mattered to us. We saw a straight arrow hero who didn't even kiss a girl. Too mushy for us kids. He stood for what is right and we looked up to him. We need another Hoppy to ride into the lives of today's kids. Too bad those kind of heroes have vanished from the movies.

Everybody mentions Robert Mitchum in this movie, but if you coughed at the right time, you miss his entire dialog. George Reeves had the meatier part and looked Superman-ish in it. Victor Jory was a well known actor who did a lot more than cowboy baddies. Two others stood out for me. One was Earl Hudgins, the barkeep, a solid character actor who had a long list of movie credits, usually as some kind of con artist. The other was Roy Barcroft, a competent heavy in many TV cowboy shows of the 50s. In this, he had a minor part as a rancher with a complaint. There was plenty of action in this Hoppy flick if you count all the endless horse riding and the several long gunfights. The one nothing part was the lone female who gave up acting after this, her first and last job in Hollywood.