I've had occasion to view a number of Hopalong Cassidy films over the past few weeks and the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, California happened to be featured prominently in a handful of them. It's a landscape of huge boulder formations with passable trails, and in the restored Hoppy movies I've seen they're magnificent to experience. For this picture, the film makers decided to give them a somewhat mystical connotation, and for a while there during the opening segment it looked like we were going to see a ghost themed Western. I would have liked it if they followed through.
Instead, we eventually learn that a woman on the run (Elaine Riley) is attempting to locate some stolen gold so she could have it returned to a bank in Soledad from which it was taken. She's pursued by a posse of outlaws led by Judge Morton (Robert Elliott) who want the gold for themselves naturally. The Judge claims the woman is his daughter, so Hoppy and his pals have some work to do to sort things out. You know, I've seen it in a few of his films now where Hoppy (William Boyd) almost magically seems to know what's what and eventually brings the viewer around to his solution, but it's only until later events reveal what he's been thinking. In that regard, he strikes me as the Charlie Chan of the Wild West.
Regarding our heroine, there's a bit of a twist written into her role, and not to the satisfaction of Hoppy's buddy. The Miss is a Mrs., so scratch off another doomed romance for Lucky Jenkins (Rand Brooks). Elaine Riley made for a pretty heroine, but to be quite honest, she was a terrible actress and her performance pretty much defined the term wooden. She has a pretty extensive credits list here on the IMDb, with a fair amount of TV episode appearances in the Forties and Fifties, so maybe she just had a bad day.
Instead, we eventually learn that a woman on the run (Elaine Riley) is attempting to locate some stolen gold so she could have it returned to a bank in Soledad from which it was taken. She's pursued by a posse of outlaws led by Judge Morton (Robert Elliott) who want the gold for themselves naturally. The Judge claims the woman is his daughter, so Hoppy and his pals have some work to do to sort things out. You know, I've seen it in a few of his films now where Hoppy (William Boyd) almost magically seems to know what's what and eventually brings the viewer around to his solution, but it's only until later events reveal what he's been thinking. In that regard, he strikes me as the Charlie Chan of the Wild West.
Regarding our heroine, there's a bit of a twist written into her role, and not to the satisfaction of Hoppy's buddy. The Miss is a Mrs., so scratch off another doomed romance for Lucky Jenkins (Rand Brooks). Elaine Riley made for a pretty heroine, but to be quite honest, she was a terrible actress and her performance pretty much defined the term wooden. She has a pretty extensive credits list here on the IMDb, with a fair amount of TV episode appearances in the Forties and Fifties, so maybe she just had a bad day.