When Bob Steele's father, the sheriff, is killed with a knife, his deputies know the gang who did it, but their hangout is too dangerous to go to. Bob goes in and discovers Lorraine Randall working there. Her brother and she were passing through with $12,000 in traveler's checks. He's disappeared -- which makes me think it's not particularly safe to leave home with them either -- supposedly working with the gang, while she's waiting for word from him. It's up to Bob to figure out who did the murder, rescue Miss Randall and her brother and get everyone out alive.
It's a Republic western, which means it's pretty good, with a script by George H. Plympton, camerawork by Bert Longenecker, and some of the fight choreography that they were developing at that scrappy movie factory. As a Bob Steele western, however, it's just so-so, however. There's some fine riding, and a few fine high shots of what I think is undercranked racing around Lone Pine, as well as a good trucking shot, but Steele was an athletic cowboy star, always ready to race across a long ridge and dive into a deep canyon,, at least in the early 1930s when he was starring in oaters for his father, Robert Bradbury. In this one, although he's fine in the riding and in a fight scene or two, there's none of that easy athleticism. Perhaps Republic wasn't willing to take such chances with a bankable star; perhaps it was his age. He turned 30 that year. In any case, it's a solid B western with a goodly assortment of hissable western bad guys acting nasty for a suspicious movie-goer to choose for a murderer.
It's a Republic western, which means it's pretty good, with a script by George H. Plympton, camerawork by Bert Longenecker, and some of the fight choreography that they were developing at that scrappy movie factory. As a Bob Steele western, however, it's just so-so, however. There's some fine riding, and a few fine high shots of what I think is undercranked racing around Lone Pine, as well as a good trucking shot, but Steele was an athletic cowboy star, always ready to race across a long ridge and dive into a deep canyon,, at least in the early 1930s when he was starring in oaters for his father, Robert Bradbury. In this one, although he's fine in the riding and in a fight scene or two, there's none of that easy athleticism. Perhaps Republic wasn't willing to take such chances with a bankable star; perhaps it was his age. He turned 30 that year. In any case, it's a solid B western with a goodly assortment of hissable western bad guys acting nasty for a suspicious movie-goer to choose for a murderer.