When old man Hiram Moore dies, two rumors float about: one is that as a miser he buried a lot of money somewhere on his ranch and secondly, that his ghost roams the ranch. A gang of crooks led by Brandon, believe Hiram left a map of the location of the treasure in a painting of Hiram. At the auction selling off Hiram's possessions and ranch, the crooks overbid on the portrait thus making Jerry Lane (Tyler) and Hiram's granddaughter Jeanne Moore (Beth Marion) suspicion. Jeanne soon runs out of money but Jerry has money from the sale of his ranch so buys both the painting and Hiram's ranch! Jerry is quite smitten with Jeanne even though they had only met briefly a few hours prior to the auction. With the ranch comes an English butler, Eddie Parsons, who seems to be a bit light-fingered early in the movie. Sammy Cohen as Eddie provides the comic relief and does a pretty good job of it but as the previous reviewer noted, he forgot his English accent in a couple of scenes. There is also lurking about a spooky housekeeper who was paid by Brandon to spy on Jerry. Things heat up when Jerry is unjustly (of course) accused of murder. This was a pleasant little Western but not as good, to me, as Rip Roarin' Buckeroo, which had the exact same lead players – and same beautiful scenery.
Review of The Phantom of the Range
