With the location of the story taking place in Red Gap, I was looking for a guy named Ruggles to come along, but that never happened. Instead, Eddie Dean moseys on over to the town and decides to stick around when he finds out the father of young Cathy Jordan (Nancy Gates) was murdered six months earlier. Eddie's usual sidekick Soapy Jones (Roscoe Ates) is already there, doing double duty as a barber and a deputy sheriff. This is one of Soapy's more serious roles, since usually he's the one providing comic relief in these pictures, but this time out he plays it fairly straight most of the time.
As usual with these cheapie PRC Westerns, a couple of continuity errors make it into the picture. I'm always on the lookout for them, so it was no surprise that during Eddie Dean's saloon brawl with Ace Banyon (Mikel Conrad), the bar wobbles back and forth a bit as they go over the side. Later on, same location, bad guy Taggert shoots out the lights in the saloon right after the newly arrived Judge Walsh (Steve Clark) enters to meet Eddie Dean. In that short span of time, the lighting in the barroom is just fine again! Actually, that's part of my enjoyment in watching these old time oaters. They were put together so quickly and cheaply that even if anyone on the set might have noticed the continuity errors, there wasn't time for a do over.
With that though, there were a couple of elements in the story I hadn't seen before. One was that gimmick of Eddie, Soapy and Judge Walsh racing through town to get the bad guys to follow. Once they did, they were led right into the hands of a waiting posse. Then, when it came time for Eddie's show down with banker Farrell (George Chesebro), outlaw Taggert (I. Stanford Jolley) used a mirror to shine some glare into Eddie's eyes. You would think that would have worked, but instead, Eddie shot both Farrell and Taggert - what a guy!
The first couple of musical numbers in the picture were handled by Andy Parker and The Plainsmen, but the final tune was done as a 'dueling' duet between Eddie and the pretty Nancy Gates. I wasn't sure Miss Gates was paying attention because the first line of the song by Eddie was - "You're as pretty as a palomino pony." One might interpret that as saying she had a face like a horse, but she sure looked fine to me.
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