Law of the Lash

As a kid, seeing dusters like this made my day. I loved them then and I still do now. A staple lower half or 'kiddie' matinée fixture, they were churned out on an assembly line, probably in pre-production for three or four weeks, shot in three or four days, and then wound up with another three/four weeks of post production prior to release. They looked cheap and they were cheap, especially when cranked through the PRC sausage factory. Making matters even worse, the Alpha Video transfer of this cheapie Poverty Row opus is grainy and at times bleached, making a bad situation even worse. Still, it's fun watching our boy crack the whip as he herds another gang of baddies towards their just desserts, toothless Fuzzy Knight along for comic relief.

Storywise, there is nothing much original about this one that pits your garden variety robber/town terrorizer against the skills and determination of incognito lawman Larue and sidekick Knight. What is a little more original is the higher quality acting one gets from our two heroes, definitely a cut above the usual phoned-in nonsense one usually finds in these sagebrush programmers. Indeed, Larue's most notable rival at the time, Monogram's incredibly wooden Whip Wilson could only watch in envy.

'B' programmers like "Law of the Lash" may not be high art, but they are entertaining and that's all that counts. It's just too bad the look of this one is so decrepit. Otherwise, it might have at least merited a five instead of the three it got.