Twilight on the Rio Grande

Gene Autry goes to the local cantina to get his hands and partner Bob Steele back to work. Steele is busy, though, seeing if he can put the moves on singer Adele Mara, so they decide to stay overnight. That's a mistake, because Steele winds up dead, and the local police don't seem to be interested in any of the clues that Autry put before them, nor the jewelery being smuggled across the border. So Gene investigates, primarily with the help of comic sidekick Sterling Holloway.

It's a rather dull and poorly put-together effort for Republic, who seem to have lost interest in Autry, despite the $200,000 this film cost. Indeed, Medved and Lowell include it among their book The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time (and how they got that way. There are lots of things wrong with it, including the erratic manner in which the songs are plopped into the proceedings, the odd plot turns, the occasional efforts of cinematographer William Bradford to do random scenes with a film noir look, the lack of anything funny for Holloway to do, and the performance of Charles Evans.

Even so, it's not among the 50 worst films of all time; it's not even among the 50 worst films I have seen this year. Medved & Lowell might have it in for singing cowboys, but I've seen worse than this, and a lot of B westerns that might qualify better. Clearly they were aiming at movies with players and associated talent that were well known, and this is a poor -- although not uniquely so -- film for Autry.