Hopalong Rides Again

Second film with crazy professor--FALSE PARADISE (second to last) artie the pest--kid wants to grow up too fast dynamite

I've seen quite a few B-westerns over the years and have enjoyed most of them. However, I never saw any of the Hopalong Cassidy pictures until recently...and considering I've recently watched about of them (and counting), I obviously like them! Much of this is because these films are more westerns than pretty-guy westerns. Hoppy doesn't sing, romance nor wear colorful duds...he's just a tough guy who is always on the side of good. Another reason I've seen so many is that unlike his contemporaries, such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, the Cassidy films have been fully restored to their original length. What I mean is that in the 50s, the various cowboy hero B-movies were cut down to television time slots...and in Cassidy's case, this did happen BUT he saved the original prints. And, his estate recently cleaned them up and released them on YouTube!

"Hopalong Rides Again" is the second Cassidy film I've seen where a major character is a smart guy who is called 'the Professor'. In Cassidy's penultimate film, "False Paradise", the Professor is a nice absent-minded good guy. In "Hopalong Rides Again", he seems like an unassuming guy but is really an evil jerk who uses dynamite to help him rustle cattle! This professor claims to be researching anthropology and is looking for the so-called 'missing link' out west!

One trope that Cassidy seldom used was the cute kid who wants to be a cowboy. Here there's Artie...a little brat who thinks he's ready to do a cowboy's job. I know some folks like this plot device, but I don't and think it detracted, slightly, from the overall film. It's not realistic and the kids are generally pretty annoying. Perhaps I'm just a grouch!

Overall, this is a pretty typical Hopalong Cassidy picture. On the plus side, I liked seeing Windy (Gabby Hayes) in the films as one of his sidekicks and the action was pretty good. On the negative, the kid as well as it being yet another plot involving rustlers....and Hoppy made a ton of those!