Pride of the West

This Hopalong Cassidy movie is #18 or 19 in the series of 66 movies. It's one of the last to feature Gabby Hayes as "Windy." Hoppy doesn't appear until 9 minutes of film have passed, which tends to make his first appearance a bit more dramatic. The scenery, filmed near Mt. Whitney, is beautiful, especially for a B western. There is one exciting fight scene where Hoppy gets head-butted & knocked down (one of the best fight scenes that William Boyd ever did), but the excitement is lost a little bit at the end of the scene, when Hoppy is knocked down again but reaches up to adjust his hat so that it doesn't fall off his head! Other than that, this is probably the poorest of the Hoppy movies that featured Gabby. It's an oddly slow moving western, so slow moving & painstaking in it's detail of "no action," that the slow pace almost seems to have been purposeful. There's lots of following, observing, waiting, watching, & even a very long shot of Hoppy while apparently "thinking." Very short on action, there's only one chase scene, & although Hoppy does shoot his gun a couple of times, he shoots it in the air & not at anybody. The director was so intent on "wasting time" that we actually watch Gabby & Lucky (who oddly wears an arm sling throughout the entire movie, which doesn't even figure into the plot!) count out $30,000 in $20 gold pieces for a good period of time. Bizarre! Even the usually hilarious Gabby is more serious than usual & his humor doesn't quite hit the mark. This movie was apparently a "filler" while they were waiting for the next one to come along. I'm a Hoppy fanatic, but I can only rate this 5/10.