When one of Rocky Lane's courier buddies is shot and killed, the cowboy hero heads off to the town of Durango to help avenge his friend and get the goods on the bad guys who are looting local wagon trains and creating general havoc. It's true as another reviewer points out, that the town of Durango is never mentioned by name, however one of the local businesses names the town in the latter part of the movie. In the main plot of the story, local ranchers must wait a week for a forty thousand dollar payload to arrive in town in order to make their mortgage payments, and my timing in watching the film had me chuckling each time Sheriff Walters (Ross Ford) reassured the ranchers with "The money will be here in time". It was like listening to a bunch of hot shot bankers who created the sub prime mortgage mess telling us that everything was really OK, until of course, it wasn't.
Here's something to think about - when Rocky arrived in town and filled Sheriff Walters in on how his money pouch was stolen, they watch as Cricket Adams (Walter Baldwin) goes into a store across the street from the jail. The sheriff states that they could go out to Cricket's farm to look for the strongbox that the outlaws probably hid there. However Rocky was a stranger to Durango and didn't know any of it's residents, while the sheriff couldn't know Rocky was referring to Cricket's farm. Lucky guess? - I don't think so. Or how about Rocky sliding across the dirt to escape a bad guy bullet at Cricket's farm? When he gets up, his shirt isn't even dusty! Now there's a super power I didn't know cowboys had. And say, wasn't that an awful big ranch house old Cricket had for a corn farmer?
I guess that's what makes a lot of these old 'B' oaters so entertaining, even when a lot of thought wasn't put into the story line. What you need to do is concentrate on the cowboy hero, and in this one, Rocky's always well poised with his manner and his fists. I especially enjoyed his wild brawl with villain Blake (Steve Darrell) in the local saloon, making great use of breakaway props and furniture, along with that great rescue aboard Black Jack when Cricket's buckboard took off in an early scene. Also gratifying to see that the story's hero passes on making a play for the rancher's niece (Aline Towne), deferring to the sheriff instead. Makes it a whole lot easier to move along at the end of the story.
Here's something to think about - when Rocky arrived in town and filled Sheriff Walters in on how his money pouch was stolen, they watch as Cricket Adams (Walter Baldwin) goes into a store across the street from the jail. The sheriff states that they could go out to Cricket's farm to look for the strongbox that the outlaws probably hid there. However Rocky was a stranger to Durango and didn't know any of it's residents, while the sheriff couldn't know Rocky was referring to Cricket's farm. Lucky guess? - I don't think so. Or how about Rocky sliding across the dirt to escape a bad guy bullet at Cricket's farm? When he gets up, his shirt isn't even dusty! Now there's a super power I didn't know cowboys had. And say, wasn't that an awful big ranch house old Cricket had for a corn farmer?
I guess that's what makes a lot of these old 'B' oaters so entertaining, even when a lot of thought wasn't put into the story line. What you need to do is concentrate on the cowboy hero, and in this one, Rocky's always well poised with his manner and his fists. I especially enjoyed his wild brawl with villain Blake (Steve Darrell) in the local saloon, making great use of breakaway props and furniture, along with that great rescue aboard Black Jack when Cricket's buckboard took off in an early scene. Also gratifying to see that the story's hero passes on making a play for the rancher's niece (Aline Towne), deferring to the sheriff instead. Makes it a whole lot easier to move along at the end of the story.