I'd never seen a Red Ryder western before today, although I'd read and heard about them. Based on what I've seen so far, I am not impressed.
I realize that this series was made for kids, and I've taken that into account, but it was still incredibly juvenile; I can imagine kids sitting in a theater in 1944 watching this and saying "Oh, come on, get real". The script, even for a kid's western, is puerile and sloppy, although Bill Elliott does a pretty good job of trying to make the juvenile dialog he has to recite seem not so juvenile. Elliott definitely has a screen presence and did first-rate work in a string of westerns for Republic and, later, Allied Artists, but he's not shown to his best advantage here. Linda Stirling is quite attractive and athletic--as she showed in "The Tiger Woman" serial for Republic, which came out the same year as this film--and does the best she can with what she's given. The action is, of course, fast and furious, as you would expect from Republic, and the supporting cast is full of great western players--Leroy Mason, Glenn Strange, Robert Wilke, Tom London, among others--but what really ruined this for me were Earle Hodgins as Happy Jack and Robert Blake as Little Beaver. I like both of them as actors, but Blake was definitely not even remotely convincing as an Indian kid. His performance was so grating and annoying that I found myself closing my eyes and shaking my head whenever he came on. Hodgins specialized in fast-talking medicine-show hustlers, carnival barkers, two-faced small-town politicians, etc., and he was great at that, but playing the confused and confusing sidekick Happy Jack and seeing him getting constantly bested by Blake's bratty little Indian kid was depressing, to say the least,
All in all, I'd have to say that if this is a good example of Elliott's Red Ryder series, then I don't particularly want to see the rest of them. I'll give him a couple of more chances, though. We'll see what happens.
