Streets of Ghost Town (1950)
*** (out of 4)
Surprisenly good, if very cheap, "B" Western from Columbia has Steve Woods (Charles Starrett) arriving in a ghost town where we hear about a legend involving a hidden treasure. It turns out that the only person who knows where the treasure is is currently blind, in jail and isn't telling his secret. This entry in the studio's Durango Kid series is actually the best I've seen for a couple reasons. For starters, this entry dabbles in quite a few horror elements including the heroes messing around with a skull early on and there are other elements including how dark some of the material is. Another thing that keeps this one entertaining is that all sorts of stock footage is used and I found it rather fun seeing how they used it for the story. This includes a rather amazing looking cattle stampede, which was perhaps the highlight of this film (I'm not sure which film it was originally in). Starrett seems to be a bit more energized here in the dual role but he also serves a third part as the narrator. Smiley Burnette is added here and manages to bring quite a few laughs including one sequence where he gets tired of his horse not doing what he says so he decides to just run himself. STREETS OF GHOST TOWN isn't going to remind you of John Ford but it's goal wasn't to be a classic. It was meant to be entertaining and I think it does just that.