Riders of the Rockies

Tex "Rand" starts off the movie singing the title song. Riding along with his side-kicks "Doc" and early gay icon "Pee Wee" he comes across sped up footage of a stagecoach being held up. Tex and his gang save the day, meet the stock female love interest, and misplace their horses.

Tex and his gang (both of them) bum a ride to town and join with some rangers which gives Tex ample opportunity to sing "Home on the Range." After a couple minutes of painful exposition we learn that there are cattle rustlers nearby. If that were not enough to convince us of the dangers at hand we are shown sped up footage of cows and what sounds like the chipmunks yelling "Yaw! Yaw!" The leader of the rangers shouts "Get the men mounted!" and Pee Wee leads the pack in doing just that.

As is usual with these kind of films there is an innocent man (or in this case, "men") accused of a crime. Pee Wee and Doc are watching a herd of cattle. They are distracted (a scene which involves a bad guy riding up to them and saying "follow me!") and when they return the herd is gone. The rangers come to the conclusion that Pee Wee and Doc took the cows.

As far as westerns go, the plot is plum average. But some stand-out moments for me were:

-Pee Wee's Rockette-like high kick to rid the bad guy of his knife. You Go Girl!

-Tex crooning with a woman who sounds like she is singing opera. She also happens to be wearing a novelty oversized bow tie on her head. Glamorous!

-The amount of sped up footage (many westerns have sped up footage, but in this film...yikes!)

-The saloon with a bar that moves when anyone leans on it, kicks it, or breathes on it (watch it wobble in the obligatory fight scene!)

-How can you tell the Mexicans from the Ameicans? The Mexicans ALL wear straw hats (with one exception: Mendoza---who wears a milkman's hat)

-Pee Wee's ability to mince on a horse ("Aw, But Tex, I'm hungry!")

Oats!

Tex Ritter and his two sidekicks Horace Murphy and Snub Pollard are Arizona Rangers in Riders Of The Rockies, a film which aspires to spoof some operetta type films that were being done at bigger studios.

First of all Ritter gets an opening scene ballad that would have been right at home in a Nelson Eddy picture with Ritter leading a band of his Ranger buddies. Later on in a saloon Tex gets to do a duet with a Jeanette MacDonald like soprano in Louise Stanley. What must Jeanette and Nelson have thought of this film?

Sidekicks in westerns are usually played for laughs and they sure are funny here. But the only explanation for Pollard and Murphy winding up as Rangers is that it's a package deal, you get Ritter, but you have to endure these two.

And while Tex is undercover over in Mexico trying to get a line on a gang of rustlers, these two nearly gum up the works pretty good.

There's a bit more satirical type humor in Riders Of The Rockies than you find in most B westerns from Poverty Row studios.