I have seen the majority of Roy Rogers' films and must say that I much, much prefer his earlier films. There are two main reasons for this. First, the sidekick in most of the films in the early to mid-portion of his career was Gabby Hayes...and you can't get a sidekick better than Gabby. In fact, in the later films, they tried several sidekicks other than Gabby...and a couple of them were downright annoying...such as the bumbling Gordon Jones or the lisping and super-annoying Pinky Lee. The other reason is that in the later films, Roy tended to play a fictionalized and highly idealized version of himself that is much nicer and less tough than his earlier characters...not that they were mean. It seems in the later ones, they wanted Roy to be the ultimate swell guy....and often at the expense of excitement in the script. He was already nice enough in the earlier films in my opinion! Because of my general feelings, it's not surprising that I wasn't looking forward to seeing "In Old Amarillo"...a later Rogers film with Pinky Lee. For the record, Lee is much like a lisping, nasal and less subtle version of Pee Wee Herman...which makes no sense at all in a western!
When the story begins, you learn that there's been a bad drought on the range. Now Roy's been made foreman on a ranch and he's out to make sure the men economize on the water in order to help them through this crisis. At the same time, someone is trying to make it much worse and they don't seem above murder to make these ranchers miserable and lose their homes, livestock and land. But their ultimate weapon in their efforts is the stupid and headstrong son of Roy's boss.
I didn't like this film...mostly because of Pinky. But Estelita Rodriquez is pretty tough to like. While she appeared in many Roy Rogers films, this is possibly her worst appearance because she's loud and almost like the reincarnation of Lupe Valez...which, like Lee, just doesn't fit into this picture well at all. I also hated the 'funny' sound effects that you hear whenever Pinky does something dopey. What did I like? Well, I really liked it when one of the baddies bashed Pinky over the head...at least that shut him up! But you know it's bad when THAT is the highlight of the movie for me!
When the story begins, you learn that there's been a bad drought on the range. Now Roy's been made foreman on a ranch and he's out to make sure the men economize on the water in order to help them through this crisis. At the same time, someone is trying to make it much worse and they don't seem above murder to make these ranchers miserable and lose their homes, livestock and land. But their ultimate weapon in their efforts is the stupid and headstrong son of Roy's boss.
I didn't like this film...mostly because of Pinky. But Estelita Rodriquez is pretty tough to like. While she appeared in many Roy Rogers films, this is possibly her worst appearance because she's loud and almost like the reincarnation of Lupe Valez...which, like Lee, just doesn't fit into this picture well at all. I also hated the 'funny' sound effects that you hear whenever Pinky does something dopey. What did I like? Well, I really liked it when one of the baddies bashed Pinky over the head...at least that shut him up! But you know it's bad when THAT is the highlight of the movie for me!