Bar 20 Rides Again

I wish I could have rated this movie higher. I like westerns in general, the half-hour Hoppy TV shows are OK, the first Hoppy movie (Hopalong Cassidy Enters) was fine.

This one, though, seemed cheesy, almost juvenile. The scenery was good, and the bad guy, whatever his over the top faults, was certainly interesting and different.

I'll give just some examples of the silly inferior quality of it: (1) Hoppy is going undercover as a card shark in order to join the bad guys' gang. When asked what he was doing at their hideout, he says he is after the James Ellison character (a friend of Hoppy), whom Hoppy lies that he wants to kill. The leader of the bad guys also wants Ellison killed, so they travel to a place where Hoppy is given a rifle to shoot Ellison, who is hundreds of yards away. So from that distance Hoppy makes a miraculous shot, just grazing Ellison's head, making him temporarily unconscious. (2) The scene with Buck's sister visiting was unfunny and completely unnecessary. (3) I always hate it when the good guy sets a fire to suit his purposes. Here Hoppy left a magnifying glass in the sun near some brush, that eventually ignites the fire, yet the bad guys can't reach it in time before it signals the good guys. Scenes like these make you cringe.