Prairie Rustlers (1945)
Billy Carson is accused of the crimes committed by his dead-ringer, outlaw cousin Jim Slade, and barely escapes a lynching. With the aid of his pal Fuzzy Jones, Billy catches up with his cousin and clears his own name.
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Strong and Moving!
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Buster Crabbe does double duty in this B Western flick, portraying his regular character of the series, Billy Carson, as well as outlaw cousin Jim Slade who's out of jail and heading up his old gang again. Crabbe also does something I haven't seen in one of his Westerns before, and that's showing off his physique in a couple of beefcake scenes where he switches clothes with his cousin. You know, when they showed Carson and Slade together in profile, their upper torsos didn't look the same, and that left me a little curious as to whether they used a stand-in for those scenes.So with Al St. John around as sidekick Fuzzy Jones, you never know what to expect. The gimmick this time, besides his being sworn in as sheriff to replace the one killed by Slade's gang, has to do with a new fangled contraption Fuzzy wins in a raffle. I don't know how he did it, but Fuzzy wheels his way around the saloon on a bicycle without taking anyone out. It was entertaining enough where they brought him back a second time and he did some incredible stunts while riding backwards and on one wheel. I can only imagine what he would have been able to do on a skateboard today.Sometimes in these character double pictures it tends to get confusing but this time around it's easy enough to keep Carson and his evil cousin in perspective. Maybe not so easy for the players though, as rancher Helen Foster (Evelyn Finley) thinks Carson really IS one of the bad guys. Not to worry, things get sorted out well enough by the time it's over. Besides the doppelganger for Crabbe, Kermit Maynard and I. Stanford Jolley are on hand as additional reliable villains, and you'll have to stick around for Fuzzy's clever ruse to promote Billy Carson to the new sheriff in town.