Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good concept, poorly executed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Richard Dix finds himself a partner, a gold mine, and a girlfriend, in this paint by the numbers western. In the meantime, Dix has to foil a stage robbery, prevent a claim jumper from getting his mine, break out of jail, and avoid getting hanged so he can keep the black hatted bar owning bad guy from marrying his gal.What's just plumb too bad about this movie is that, though there sure seems to be a lot of action going on from a bare description of the plot, there is not a whole lot of action, and none of it is terribly interesting. While it's refreshing, in a way, to see a movie that does not strive to put a single negative trait (except, perhaps, a slightly too swift jumping to conclusions) in its clean livin' hero, it makes for rather bland drama, particularly as there is no possible way the plot won't play out in the way it plays out.Richard Dix gets a few scenes with the leading lady where he shows a lot of charm. Otherwise. It's just boring.

This is a little treasure that I remember from the good old days when the CBC used to show these cool second features from the RKO catalog on Saturday mornings. It's a solid, very entertaining B western featuring Richard Dix who gets mixed up in the gold rush and some owlhoots who frame him for a stagecoach robbery. Although his film is less tongue-in-cheek than a lot of these matinee westerns, there is a great scene featuring the three outlaws, who really did rob the stage, in the saloon. The bartender casually mentions that the stage got robbed, and they simultaneously spit booze out of their mouths! And there's a cool climax in a dust storm. This is a great treat from yesteryear; I hope it resurfaces again some day.