I enjoy the Hopalong Cassidy B-westerns, though I am not so enamored with them that I won't admit that sometimes the plots are a bit predictable. This is especially true with "Hopalong Cassidy Returns".
When the story begins, Peg-leg comes into town making a ruckus....as he's just discovered a rich vein of gold in his mine. He's so loud about this strike that you KNOW sooner or later someone will kill him and take his mine before the old prospector can file his claim...which is exactly what happens. And, when Hoppy comes to town to investigate, it's not like he needs to be Nostradamus to realize that a guy named 'Blackie' is one of the folks behind the murder and stolen claim! To make it more obvious, Morris Akrum plays Blackie....and he ALWAYS is a bad guy when he appears in a Hopalong Cassidy flick....always. You might want to note that in this film, Akrum is inexplicably billed as 'Stephen Morris'...but it's obviously him. As for Blackie's confederate, it's also pretty obvious that the local madame, Lilli Marsh, is involved...as she files a claim for a big strike the day AFTER Peg-leg is killed!! It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes or Charlie Chan to figure out who's behind the murder!
This film is a bit unusual in that it is the only one of 66 Hopalong Cassidy films that features his brother, Buddy (William Janney), as one of his sidekicks...the other is Windy (Gabby Hayes), who was one of the sidekicks in the earlier Cassidy pictures. Why his brother never appeared in another film, I have no idea...but he was pretty much like Lucky or Jimmy...young, headstrong and kind of stupid...but brave when it counts.
So is this film any good despite being a bit predictable? Yes. I think one thing that really helped the film was how violent it was. While I wouldn't say it was grisly, it was more action-packed and featured some amazingly tough scenes...such as the guy in the wheelchair being drug to his death and the final showdown with Blackie. Gritty and exciting...and, of course, a bit predictable. But overall a very good film.
