I greatly enjoyed the Coen Brothers' 2018 Western anthology movie THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS. At the time, I thought that the singing cowboy star played by Tim Blake Nelson was the sort of nightmare that you get after watching a bunch of B Western movies while eating lobster and Welsh Rabbit. * Then I watched this movie and realized that Buster Scruggs is based on about a score of Producers Releasing Corporation singing westerns starring Eddie Dean from about 1945 through 1948. He's not a poor actor, and his singing is good, if you can get used to the seemingly random way his mouth moves while he rides singing on his horse. And Roscoe Ates as comic relief. The camerawork may be ok; the print/transfer I saw was dark, flat and low-contrast for the exterior scenes and fairly film noir for the interiors.
The story, as far as I could tell over the poor and random-sounding score, involved Jennifer Holt, a local girl who puts on a mask to become the Hawk, a mysterious road agent with several followers. She is trying to scare off June Carlson from her family ranch. Judging by the characters' last names, the two women are probably cousins. Eddie tries to help Miss Carlson.
The B western in general and the singing western in particular was in decline. PRC was also in terminal decline, having been replaced by Eagle-Lion and soon to vanish into United Artists. In fact, this appears to be the next-to-last PRC release, with the last the final in the Eddie Dean series. I can't imagine anyone put extra effort into it. At least, I hope not.
*Or perhaps eating a bunch of B westerns while watching a lobster and Welsh Rabbit. Since I have never tried either course of action, this is all supposition.
