Trailing Double Trouble (1940) User Reviews

Elmer somehow proves himself to be useful.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 6 January 2021]

The copy of "Trailing Double Trouble" I found on YouTube had lousy sound. If you want to see this film, you might just want to see if you can find a different copy.

This story features the same line up for the Range Busters for the first 2/3 of their films: Ray Corrigan, Dusty King, Max Terhune and his weird sidekick, Elmer. It begins with some folks attacking a man and his baby. The man is killed but the Range Busters come along and chase the killers off...and they rescue the little boy. For the time being, Max is the baby's nanny...until they can figure out what to do with the kid. They also need to figure out who is behind the murder.

This is a pretty typical Range Busters film. For once, however, Elmer comes in a bit handy when folks come to kidnap the baby again....see it and see what I mean. Overall, a very enjoyable and typical outing for the trio.

"You couldn't catch cold in a barrel of ice water..."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 19 September 2011]

This was the second in a series of Range Busters films beginning in 1940 featuring a trio of cowboy heroes - Ray 'Crash' Corrigan, John 'Dusty' King, and Max 'Alibi' Terhune. Max's wooden dummy Elmer Sneedweed got an opening credit as well, and got quite a bit of screen time in this one. He was most effective as the stand in for the baby the bad guys thought they were kidnapping for their boss Jim Moreland (Roy Barcroft). The baby was central to the plot, as Moreland needed to be officially declared it's ward in order to take control of the Bar-H Ranch owned by the baby's father who was murdered in the picture's opening scene. The story was a bit of a head scratcher for me because the baby's mother was never alluded to in the entire story. Instead, Horner had a sister back at the Bar-H trying to protect the family ranch against the designs of the bad guys.

Beyond that, the film is a fairly standard entry in the Range Busters series, as the good guys narrow down their prospects and set up Moreland and his henchmen for the fall. A key ingredient of Moreland's plan was a letter assigning him effective control of the Bar-H once he secured a gravel contract worth fifty thousand dollars. Eventually, Corrigan confiscates the letter and has the proof he needs to put the baddies away for good.

The picture uses comedy relief to good effect courtesy of Max Terhune and his buddy Elmer. In one scene, Max takes great pains to diaper the baby, only to have it fall off immediately when he picks the baby up. Another time he does some fancy bird whistles that sounded pretty good to my ear, but the best trick of all on the part of The Range Busters was making dummies out of the bad guys by the end of the picture.

Gaining Full Control

[StrictlyConfidential · 6/10 · 25 September 2021]

"Trailing Double Trouble" was originally released back in 1940.

Anyway - As the story goes - In this exciting Range Busters feature, our trio of heroes comes across an ambush, where they are too late to save the man being attacked but they do rescue the infant in the man's possession. It turns out that the infant is the heir to a fortune and the outlaws are trying to kidnap the baby for their boss, an attorney looking to gain control of the money.