His Brother's Ghost

This film is one of a series starring Buster Crabbe as Billy Carson, a rancher who spends a good portion of his time attempting to better the lives of sharecroppers and others who run afoul of varying murderous plotters; in this instance, a friend of Carson is killed and replaced by his twin brother, causing consternation amidst the villains who are convinced that the twin is a vengeful ghost. Most of this short (54 min.) work consists of two small groups of extraordinarily confident horsemen who canter about, chasing and shooting at each other, in essentially non-stop fashion; one's attention becomes drawn to spotting the interchangeability of the good and bad guys......nothing else here warrants a viewer's concentration.

In His Brother's Ghost, Al St. John takes center stage as both Fuzzy Jones and his twin brother Andy, a rancher besieged by villains trying to take over his spread.

Mortally wounded, he sends for Fuzzy, who then teams up with Billy Carson to battle the bad guys by dressing as his now dead brother and playing ghost to frighten the superstitious baddies into spilling the beans on their mystery employer.

Another typical entry in Producers Releasing Corporation's Billy Carson series, this has some okay action and St. John is great, really getting to show off his acting skills in the scenes where Andy lays dying.

Another great scene has Fuzzy staring through a window and getting a rise from a dim-witted gunman, disappearing into the darkness before the frightened man's companions can notice.

However, His Brother's Ghost hits a low point (for the film and the series) when Fuzzy hides behind a skinny wooden post and pokes out his head and shoulders a' la Looney Tunes. That was just too silly, even for a Saturday morning matinée western!

Released in 1945 - His Brother's Ghost is just one of many, many Hollywood B-Westerns that turned me, as a youngster, into a devoted Cowboy-Junkie as I sat for hours in front of the TV set completely fascinated and entertained by these low-budget, rip-roarin' tales of the Old West.

With its simple, straight-forward story that pitted the good guys against the bad guys, His Brother's Ghost also contained elements of comedy which certainly helped to move this gun-happy tale along at a light-hearted pace.

Starring ex-Flash Gordon dude, Buster Crabbe (as good guy, Billy Carson), His Brother's Ghost tells the story of a crooked gang of ruthless marauders who are terrorizing the region by systematically murdering landowners and then taking possession of their ranches and farms.

When these cut-throat bandits kill Andy Jones (Fuzzy's brother), Billy Carson decides to enlist Fuzzy as the ghost of his brother in order to frighten these easily-scared bad guys off.

With this plan set into motion, Billy hopes to expose the gang-leader's identity, and thus bring peace to the valley and restore the stolen property to the rightful owners.

Filmed in b&w, His Brother's Ghost had a very brief running time of only 52 minutes.

This poverty-row picture was directed by Sam Newfield who, throughout the 1930s & 40s, literally turned out hundreds of similar, fast-paced B-Westerns with such titles as Stagecoach Outlaws, Prairie Badmen and Thundering Gunslingers.

With more characterization, and more of the minor characters getting more dialogue, director Sam Newfield brings George Milton's script to very active life.

According to IMDb, despite the different names as writers, they all were actually George Milton. And he deserves the credit.

Al "Fuzzy" St. John out-does himself this time, yes, still being his acrobatically funny self, but being an introspective self, too.

Bad guy Charles King out-does himself, too, and his look of glee at some particularly dastardly deed shows just what a good actor he really was.

Buster Crabbe doesn't stretch himself, but he looks good and, of course, handles his action well.

Behind them are some of the best Western players Hollywood ever had, and PRC once again rises well above its reputation.

I highly recommend "His Brother's Ghost" and there's a good print at YouTube.

After not watching westerns for two or three decades, in a fit of nostalgia I decided to watch them again. Internet Archives has quite a few of them and I selected this one – mostly because of Al St. John. Although Fuzzy having an identical twin brother is kinda a nice twist, the movie is all in all a rather pedestrian oater. However, the scene of Crabbe (Billy Carson) galloping on his horse with his arms tied was a corker. As has been pointed out previously, the business of Fuzzy peeking around the pole was unnecessary and unfunny. Although I liked Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I never did (even as a kid) warm up to him as a cowboy. My favorites were Buck Jones, Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Annie Oakley, all of who had a certain charisma, which, to me, Crabbe did not have. Still like Fuzzy though. At less than an hour, watching this movie is pleasant enough diversion.