False Colors

False Colors is an above average entry in the Hopalong Cassidy series. Young Tom Seidel, a ranch hand on Cassidy's Bar 20 spread is gunned down without any apparent reason. But there's a big reason it turns out, young Seidel is the heir to two thirds of the Diamond Hitch ranch in another part of the state. It seems as though he ran away from home as a kid and his father has died and split inheritance that way with he and his sister.

So Hoppy, Jimmy, and California go off to the Diamond Hitch country and find someone posing as their recently deceased friend. Tom Seidel is playing both the heir and the impostor.

Anyone with any kind of experience watching B westerns will know that it is banker Douglass Dumbrille behind the dastardly scheme as he's behind any number nefarious enterprises in film. Dumbrille even has sheriff Roy Barcroft in his pocket. The suspense here is how Hoppy and his pals save the situation for the sister and now real sole heir of the ranch. Let's just say he's got something up his sleeve and he doesn't tip his hand right away.

In the cast as one of Dumbrille's henchmen is Robert Mitchum and this is one of about half a dozen Cassidy westerns where Mitchum got some of his earliest roles. He has a really brutal saloon fight with Bill Boyd who has to save Andy Clyde from a beating. Truth be told Andy Clyde kind of deserved one. But you see the film to find out.

It's a nicely plotted story, definitely above average for a B western and even a Hopalong Cassidy film which were generally above average as B westerns went. Jimmy Rogers is playing a character with his own name and Jimmy was the younger son of Will. Truth be told he's not much of an actor, but the part doesn't exactly call for Robert DeNiro.