Rim of the Canyon

Gene Autry gets busted out of a stagecoach race with a sprained ankle when another driver steals a lug nut and drives Champion off. He walks to a nearby ghost town, where he finds Nan Leslie waiting for her weekly meeting with the ghost of Thurston Hall. Meanwhile, three prisoners have busted out of prison to look for $30,000 one stole from Hall twenty years ago, and to seek revenge on the son of the man who put him in prison. That's Autry.

This western is pretty much broken into three interweaved parts, with Gene and Miss Leslie, Champion trying to escape from the bad guys, and Autry playing his father twenty years earlier. It's an interestingly told story, with hints of the supernatural, and Miss Leslie sounding cracked in an ethereal way.... until it turns out the ghost has set a table for a romantic dinner for two.

Although it's a little short of songs for an Autry oater, the unusual plot certainly makes it among Autry's best in story terms. With Alan Hale Jr., Clem Bevans, and Jock Mahoney.