Sonora Stagecoach

Gene Alsace has been accused of murder and fled, and it's up to Hoot Gibson, Bob Steele and Chief Thundercloud to bring him in. He says he's innocent and there are plenty of people who don't want him to get to trial.

It's the last official entry in the Trail Blazers series, although the three leads played together in other vehicles. It's easy to see why Monogram was ready to drop the series. Hoot looks pretty worn down -- after this year, he would appear in only four more movies through 1959 -- Bob Steele is no longer the athletic youth of the 1930s, and Thundercloud (nee Victor Daniels) was a potentially interesting experiment that never quite worked. They all give good performances, but this is a tired B western under the direction of the perpetually uninspired Robert Emmett Tansey.

It's movies like this which make realists and those of us too sensitive to early-40s western mannerisms shake our heads and ask a question or two - like, does one of the two main villains REALLY think that their "great set-up" lends itself to repeatability? If it ain't repeatable, how great can it be? It's suggested that an employee of the stage line stole $40,000.00 bound for the Sonora bank. Two deputies are killed and some of the money is found at his place, from where he flees, but turns himself in in the neighboring town. The actual perpetrators, however, want to silence his story by assuring his fatal return, in spite of his accompaniment by The Trail Blazers. They might have protected this guy, but it's the flick which needs saving.

By 1944 it must have been getting real hard to keep up with all the trio westerns that the various minor studios were putting out. This one is from a Trail Blazer series series from Monogram and the three guys were Hoot Gibson, Bob Steele, and Chief Thundercloud. Even in white man get up Chief Thundercloud had the usual minimum Indian dialog.

The guys are taking a stagecoach to Sonora with one passenger Gene Alsace for trial there for murder. But Alsace persuades them he's innocent and throughout the film they deal with all kind of attempts to stop the coach and kill Alsace and The Trail Blazers.

Post World War II and the trio western cycle would end. Not a moment too soon because as you can see by this one it was getting very lame.