Stagecoach War

Stagecoach War has one thing I've not seen either in any western film let alone a Hopalong Cassidy film, singing outlaws. Singing cowboys are usually the leads and the good guys. But in this film someone at Paramount hired the vocal group The King's Men together with future cowboy hero Eddie Dean as a group of outlaws who've got great harmony.

These outlaws are having a great old time robbing two competing stagecoach lines, one run by Harvey Stephens and the other run by J. Farrell MacDonald and his daughter Julie Carter. It's business and personal because Stephens and Carter were once and item. In the mix comes Russell Hayden who as the young Hoppy sidekick gets to do a lot of romancing but never gets the girl.

There's a thrilling stagecoach race to see who gets the Wells Fargo mail contract. In the end all is resolved for the law and for the forces of love and romance.

Hoppy also gets to speak his peace about that unsung hero of the west the prairie mustang. Speaking it I couldn't help being reminded of those mustang horses in The Misfits. Hoppy did say they would wind up as dog food

This film not the greatest of Cassidy films definitely isn't dog food.