Red River Robin Hood

When the story begins, you realize that the plot is VERY familiar...too familiar for B-westerns in fact. Most B-westerns have about 3 or 4 diffferent plots....and I love it when the films feature a different one. But here, it's a typical story in most every way.

A local baddie wants to control everything and toss all the ranchers and farmers off their land. So, he uses a crooked judge to back up his schemes...and when that doesn't work, he uses his band of hired thugs. When Jim and Ike (Tim Holt and Cliff Edwards) return to town, they find the place in an uproar over the judge's decisions....but decide to fight him and the baddie boss by pretending to be evil and work for the side of evil...while actually working to expose their awfulness.

So, we have the VERY typical bad boss who wants everyone's land, the crooked judge (often it's a crooked sheriff), the good newspaper owner who is trying to fight them AND some good guys pretending to be bad...all elements that make this film about as unoriginal as possible...even compared to most Bs. To make it worse, and I know opinions will differ, but I think the likes of Hopalong Cassidy, Tim Holt and Roy Rogers (among others) simply did this sort of thing better. Overall, watchable but for fans of the genre, it's just too familiar and unimpressive to make this a must-see.