The Mystery of the Hooded Horsemen

There are Hooded Horsemen but not much of a mystery in The Mystery Of The Hooded Horseman. Still as this was a B picture feature for the Saturday matinée kid crowd it had a lot of riding and shooting with Tex Ritter singing a song or three for Grand National Pictures.

Tex Ritter and sidekick Horace Murphy come upon a gang of masked horsemen wearing Ku Klux Klan like hoods instead of your regular bandanna masks who shoot down and kill an old friend of Tex's father. The cowboy code demands Tex take action and he does. Of course there's some singing and a little romance with leading lady Iris Meredith.

There are a couple red herrings thrown at the audience as suspects, but it doesn't take too much to figure out who the leader is. Keep it simple for the kids and I'm sure they enjoyed it back then.

Tex Ritter's country stylings in his songs are the main reason to watch The Mystery Of the Hooded Horsemen today however.

This is a mediocre western programmer, utterly unremarkable and not worth your time, except for Ritter's singing of traditional songs, particularly his rendition of "Ride Around Ye Little Dogies." The acting is more concerned with making sure that people speak clearly, and the gunfire sounds like cap pistols.

All of your western tropes can be found in this film. Horse chases, gun fights, bar fights and Tex singing some nice country ballads. Worth a watch for fans of the western genre, but might be less appealing to the casual viewer.

Singing cowboys were big back in the day before they invented color and Tex RAINBOW OVER THE RANGE Ritter was of the same magnitude a performer as Roy Rogers even if some of the material he had to work with was occasionally cringe-worthy. The songs Tex has to sing this time aren't exactly top of the pops and The Ranch Ramblers howling like coyotes on stage at the saloon fare no better. This could have used a little more love and attention from the lowly Grand National Films and producer Lindsley ROLLIN' PLAINS Parsons. Tex finds himself coming to the rescue of a young lady (Iris THE SON OF DAVEY CROCKETT Parsons) who's being hounded by a gang of hooded bandits. Along with his loyal steed White Flash, our hero infiltrates the marauders to the consternation of the sheriff (Earl THE PURPLE VIGILANTES Dwire) who can't tell the good guys from the bad. From writer Edmond TEX RIDES WITH THE BOY SCOUTS Kelso and director Ray FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE Taylor. B&W.

When his old mentor is killed by black-hooded baddies with skull-and-crossbones on their chests, Tex and his sidekick Stubby head up to the old man's mine look for clues and protect the remaining miners from the mysterious gang.

Colorful villains, some decent action scenes, including a nice saloon brawl with veteran heavy Charles King, and some great songs, all make this pretty agreeable entertainment for fans of Tex Ritter and nineteen-thirties B-westerns in general.

In my opinion, Ritter was the most personable and the best singer of the Saturday matinée westerns and Grand National Pictures the best at strategically placing great songs to cover up the slow parts.