"Range Beyond the Blue" - what a cool name for a Western movie title, but of course it has no connection to the story at all until you get to the very end and Eddie Dean sings the title song. By that measure, the movie could also have been called "West of the Pecos", the opening tune. However a later song wouldn't have fit at all - "Pony With the Uncombed Hair". Or maybe it could have, who knows.
This was another standard Eddie Dean programmer from PRC with Roscoe Ates side-kicking along as Soapy Jones. It struck me a little odd that the folks of Yucca City made Soapy their sheriff after the real one got shot, just on Eddie's say so. No resume, no background check, heck the pair of them could have been outlaws as far as it goes, but the Forties were simpler times with simpler story lines and not a whole lot in the way of maintaining continuity. For example, the second and third times the stagecoach was robbed, there were six bandits who started the chase and only four of them wound up robbing it. What happened to the other two guys?
The other big leap of faith you have to take as a viewer was when the behind the scenes criminal mastermind Henry Rodgers (Ted Adams) shot hero Eddie when Dean entered Rodgers' office. Wouldn't a real outlaw have checked to see if his pursuer were dead?
Don't get me wrong now. I like pointing these things out as things to think about, but I'm not complaining. I could watch these flicks all day and night if I didn't have to stop and write these reviews. If you need a recommendation to catch this one, I'd say tune in to check out the heroine Margie Rodgers, portrayed by the pretty Helen Mowery. She didn't appear in a whole lot of pictures, but this is one of them.
This was another standard Eddie Dean programmer from PRC with Roscoe Ates side-kicking along as Soapy Jones. It struck me a little odd that the folks of Yucca City made Soapy their sheriff after the real one got shot, just on Eddie's say so. No resume, no background check, heck the pair of them could have been outlaws as far as it goes, but the Forties were simpler times with simpler story lines and not a whole lot in the way of maintaining continuity. For example, the second and third times the stagecoach was robbed, there were six bandits who started the chase and only four of them wound up robbing it. What happened to the other two guys?
The other big leap of faith you have to take as a viewer was when the behind the scenes criminal mastermind Henry Rodgers (Ted Adams) shot hero Eddie when Dean entered Rodgers' office. Wouldn't a real outlaw have checked to see if his pursuer were dead?
Don't get me wrong now. I like pointing these things out as things to think about, but I'm not complaining. I could watch these flicks all day and night if I didn't have to stop and write these reviews. If you need a recommendation to catch this one, I'd say tune in to check out the heroine Margie Rodgers, portrayed by the pretty Helen Mowery. She didn't appear in a whole lot of pictures, but this is one of them.