It never ceases to amaze me the historical variations that our movies, but especially those old time serials would have us believe. This one has Texas out of the Civil War when in fact General Richard Taylor's army there was the last to surrender. In any event Reconstruction has come to Texas and Abraham Lincoln has started it.
Frank McGlyn is once again Abraham Lincoln has appointed a tax collector for the reconquered Texas. But bandit Stanley Andrews has hit upon a real moneymaker of a scheme. He captures and kills the real tax collector and assumes his identity. Then the bandits start collecting in earnest.
When Andrews massacres a group of reconstituted Texas Rangers the story of how Tonto played by Chief Thundercloud rescues the lone survivor comes into play. The gimmick here though is that there are five guys any one of them could be the real Lone Ranger.
In the television series the Ranger often dropped the white outfit and the mask and used disguises as an undercover method of law enforcement. He was primarily masked though. Here he walks around like Don Diego de la Vega, but when trouble comes he dons the mask more like in the Zorro tradition. And we never see Tonto in the serial except when he's riding with the Ranger.
Not till the last chapter do we learn who the Lone Ranger is. The others keep getting themselves killed and they are eliminated one by one. Like overturning the shells at a carnival sideshow to find the elusive pea.
The assassination of Lincoln is worked in as George Cleveland is sent to investigate the Texas situation as to why there still is so much unrest in Texas. His mission gets good and compromised by John Wilkes Booth.
I saw an abbreviated version of the serial and it's as silly as most of those serials back in the day were. I'll take my Lone Ranger straightforward thank you.
