a5c7b9f00b Ben Wade and his partner Frosty return to Bellounds&#39; ranch where twenty years earlier Wade was wanted for murder. Unrecognized, he gets a job on the ranch and soon becomes involved in Folsom&#39;s cattle rustling and a chance to settle an old score. Under a false name, famed outlaw Pecos Bill gets a job at the Bellounds ranch along with his sidekick Frosty. Bill is actually Ben Wade, former owner of the Bellounds ranch and father of beautiful young Collie, the girl the two ranch foremen are fighting over. Ben works unrecognized, biding his time until he can expose the men who, years before, killed his partner and framed him for the crime, then stole his ranch. There is more than adequate financing for this Paramount effort, fourth cinematic interpretation of the Zane Grey novel, second with sound, and producer Harry &quot;Pop&quot; Sherman, creator of the William Boyd starring Hopalong Cassidy series, utilizes the extra funding to mount a generally well-crafted piece, although fiscal considerations cause a change in the film&#39;s leadveteran supporting player Douglass Dumbrille replaces an always bothersome George Bancroft due to the latter&#39;s customary excessive salary demands. In this most faithful version to the original, stage nurtured Dumbrille is castPecos Bill, a masked Robin Hood figure of the old west, a cover for his true persona, Ben Wade, who was falsely accused of murder 20 years before. Accompanied by his comical partner Frosty (the future Charlie Chan, Sydney Toler), Ben returns to the crime location to exact retribution, a risky business, but he has comewell to see his grown daughter and is able to assist her to avoid an inappropriate marriage while committing to her true love, a ranch hand played by Russell Hayden. The film moves along crisply under the well detailed direction of reliable Lesley Selander until a flagrant continuity flaw occurs involving Frosty, not recovering, while additionally a viewer will find it difficult to imagine Dumbrille in his vigorous role, despite excellent stunt work and valuable participation by cinematographer Russell Harlan, editor Sherman Rose, and old hand Western players Monte Blue, Earl Dwire and Glenn Strange. I noticed another reviewer gave this one a 10. Let&#39;s just say that we do not agree on the merits of this B-movie. My reasons for thinking it&#39;s a pretty shabby film is the bizarre casting of characterswelltoo many silly B-movie clichés.<br/><br/>The film begins with Pecos Bill (Douglass Dumbrille) and his partner (Sidney Toler) going undercover at a ranch. Only later do you learn that it was Pecos Bill&#39;s ranch and it had been stolen from him decades ago–and he was back to set things right. Now Bill was not coming to have shootouts and the like–his daughter was raised by the new owner and Bill wanted to proved that this man and his son were nothing but a couple of nogoodnicks. Not surprisingly, by the end, they&#39;ve set things right and set off in the setting sun.<br/><br/>Let&#39;s start with the casting. Dumbrille ALWAYS seemed to play well-cultured men–usually baddies. Putting this man with his patrician voice out west just seemed bizarre and ill-cast. Toler is known to most old film buffsthe second Charlie Chan–also hardly the sort you&#39;d see in a western–though he wasn&#39;t bad in comic relief. But you really could not readily accept either one for who they were supposed to be.<br/><br/>The clichés were many. A few of the sillier ones I&#39;ll mention. In one scene, one guy has his gun drawn on the other–but drops his guns so they can duke it out like men. In real life, he would have just shot the guy–no questions asked. Later, when Pecos has his guns on the baddie, he gives the baddie a chance to draw his–again, normal folks would have just blasted him. The dumbest cliché, however, and it was so predictable, was when one of the bad guys turned yellow and TOLD the baddest guy &quot;I&#39;m giving up&quot;–and you KNOW thatsoonhe says this the really, really bad guy would kill his sniveling partner! And, finally, like so many westerns, the characters are complete or nearly complete fiction. There never was a real person named Pecos Bill. All in all, while not a terrible film, it isn&#39;t a very good one–and a very cheap one to boot.
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