Aces and Eights

Aces And Eights with its rather unnecessary prologue of why the poker hand of Aces and Eights is called the dead man's hand is a somewhat overplotted western starring Tim McCoy. It was made for a fly by night outfit called Puritan Pictures that had as its logo a picture of the guy that looked like the guy on the Quaker Oats cereal box.

Everybody who knows any western lore knows that Wild Bill Hickok was holding that hand when he was shot in the back. But Tim McCoy plays a somewhat different western hero, he carries no gun and he's on a mission to expose card cheats.

He exposes a couple of them and in the process gets accused of murdering one of them. He's got Marshal Earl Hodgins on his trail and Hodgins for once is not a comic foil.

A rare western indeed having a hero who carries no gun for its time. Still a little too much plot in this B picture horse opera for the Saturday matinée crowd.