Year: 1940
Runtime: 61min
Director: Lesley Selander
Starring: William Boyd, Russell Hayden, Julie Carter, Britt Wood, Harvey Stephens
One of the nice things about old B-Westerns, aside from their fairly short length, is their predictability. Sometimes you don’t want to be challenged by a movie, to have your mind working overtime to process some impressively scripted twist or to dissect some deep, philosophical meaning behind a particular scene. Sometimes you just want some good old fashioned comfort food. Something so simple a child could appreciate it.
And since the Hopalong Cassidy movie series was made with a knowing eye toward a younger set, simple plots, action heavy set pieces, and clear cut morals were the name of the game. Even for the time period, these were simple stories about good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys always had greedy motives, while our heroes were always as pure as the driven snow.
Starring William Boyd as the titular Hopalong, this series tended to be a mixed bag depending on the film. Some were pretty good, some were pretty bad, and some were just okay. Stagecoach War falls hard into the latter category.
The plot of this short little flick sees our heroes, Hopalong, Lucky, and Speedy dealing with a band of road thieves who robbed a coach carrying Wells Fargo silver. These bandits caused quite a ruckus with their theft, enough so that Wells Fargo is considering taking on a new coach line, putting the stubborn old man who owns the current line out of a job. And since this old guy uses Bar 20 stock, that means it’d surely cut into Hopalong’s business as well.
Soon, a rich dandy is crowing about how great his horses are and how the contract should be awarded to him. This, of course, becomes a matter of pride to both men and a race is scheduled to see whose team is the best.
It’s pretty basic stuff, with Lucky Jenkins, played by B-movie stalwart Russell Hayden, once again finding himself smitten with a pretty girl. This time it’s the daughter of the old man running the stage line, played by Julie Carter. He fawns over her like a love-struck schoolboy nursing his first crush. And like that schoolboy, he finds himself rebuffed at every advance.
Seems the pretty young Carter is more interested in her father’s competition, the wealthy dandy portrayed by Harvey Stephens. I can’t really blame her. He’s a good-looking, successful businessman who isn’t immediately reduced to a drooling imbecile by her mere presence, unlike some of the other male figures on display (like, oh, say, Lucky). Heck, if he wasn’t the bad guy I’d say she should marry him!
…wait, he’s not the bad guy?
In the only unexpected turn of the movie, it turns out the guy who wears all the labels of the villain, is actually not the villain. I mean, you’d think from his wealthy, pompous attitude, willingness to pick fights with Hopalong and Lucky, and, you know, the fact that the freaking stagecoach robbery was committed by his foreman, this guy would be dirtier than a hog after a mudbath, but nope. He is purely innocent and completely ignored for the climax. This guy is just a pencil-mustache away from being Snidely Whiplash, but somehow we are expected to ignore all of these warning signs and admit that he is actually an okay fellow.
Neat, I will admit I did not see that coming. And not just because I started to doze towards the end of the brief, sixty minute runtime.
So are there any other twists in this story? No, it’s really straight forward. Prolific genre director Lesley Selander just doesn’t have his foot on the gas, allowing this one to coast in to the finish. I mean, I will cut him some slack. He did have seven movies released in 1940—at least one of them was probably good. And how many movies have you or I directed this year? Exactly. You can only expect so much from the conveyor belt of budget westerns that piled movie after movie into the matinees.
It’s just too bad the regulars in the movie actually have very little to do. Boyd just kind of shuffles about, being the right amiable sort he is, and not really being an active participant in the proceedings until the very end. The comic relief is supposed to be Speedy, played by character actor Britt Wood, but he provides no laughs in his “aw shucks” performance. In fact, the only player who gets a fair bit of screen time is Hayden, but his role is largely reduced to pining after a woman who displays less interest in him than a one-eyed pirate has in a Magic Eye book.
I mean, I get that it’s a low-budget B-Western, but usually Hopalong gets to do something other than sit on his butt and watch a slow moving stagecoach race. He just seems disinterested here, though Boyd does play him with his usual smirk firmly in place.
We don’t get much in the way of stunts either. The big race is the lengthiest segment and it plays out like a Sunday wagon ride to church. A small amount of shooting at the very end does little to redeem this dull affair. You can have one or two guys fall off their horses, sure, but it doesn’t make up for a very toothless adventure.
We do get three songs by the King’s Men. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to you. Me, I’d rather have Gene Autry any day of the week. I guess if you really, really like old cowboy crooners it might be kind of interesting.
That’s the movie’s biggest sin: It’s dull. Even at less than 70 minutes long, it drags in several scenes as nothing of any merit happens. Even the usual unintentional laughs were conspicuously absent. There just wasn’t anything interesting happening. I couldn’t even muster up more than one or two good wisecracks at the screen.
It’s on the low end of the B-Western scale. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but it’s one that most everyone could feel comfortable skipping, unless you are a die hard Hopalong fan trying to see all sixty-three films.
