His Brother's Ghost

Okay, let's start at the VERY beginning. Watch the storybook credits begin, and the hand turn the page, or at least tries to. It FUMBLES! Loved that. So begins 'His Brother's Ghost' a not bad actioner with the 'King Of The Cowboys' Buster Crabbe.. Yes, Buster Crabbe and his ever faithful sidekick, Al (Fuzzy) St. John. In this St John is murdered because the Bad Guys wants his land. Luckily, St. John has a twin brother that comes around to spook them out! Remember, Crabbe is the main guy here, so it IS kind of curious that the main plot focuses around St Johns' character. Oh well, Both of them are good, not great. What I always find amusing is that no one can shoot worth a lick except for Crabbe, who can shoot a gun out of someone's hand! Oh yeah, watch out for Crabbe's coughing horse. lol

During the 1930s-1950s, Hollywood made 147283401324 B-westerns--such as those with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. However, there were many, many more B series westerns as well with the likes of Hopalong Cassidy, Lash LaRue, the Cisco Kid and many, many others.

This film stars Larry "Buster" Crabbe--ex-Olympic swimming champion and low-rent actor who played Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in serials. While few would know it today, he actually made quite a few low-budget westerns and west definitely NOT among the better movie cowboys--though he was tall and had nice clean clothes. Now considering that "His Brother's Ghost" was made by one of the crappiest of the 'Poverty Row' studios, it's actually surprisingly good--which, really, isn't saying much! After all, most of these series films really didn't have great plots nor were the actors that great either. They were simply churned out by the dozen and undiscerning audiences loved 'em.

In this film, despite Crabbe getting top billing, the star seems to be Al St. John. If you don't know, St. John was one of Fatty Arbuckle's relatives and played his foil in many silent comedies. In the 1930s and 40s, St. John had re-invented himself as a cowboy sidekick and was kept very busy in this capacity.

The film starts with the usual rich baddies trying to run out all the ranchers. One of the most recalcitrant of the ranchers is play by St. John and the other ranchers look to him to lead a fight against the forces of evil. But, when he is killed, the cause for niceness is given a severe blow. Crabbe, though, has an idea--to get St. John's identical twin(!) to pretend to be him! This is very contrived but also a bit funny--injecting a tiny bit of life into this otherwise routine film. While you might balk at my giving it a 3, most of these films deserved 3s as they lacked imagination and depth and were meant mostly for little kids.

This is a Classic of all Classic early Westerns with great stars as Buster Crabbe, (Billy Carson), Al St. John,(Fuzzy Jones) and the bad bad guy who always wore a big black hat, Charles King,(Thorne) In this film Thorne is a bandit, con-man who wants to take over all the ranchers property and decides to either scare them off their land or just plain murder them all. Thorne has the doctor, sheriff and other officials in the Western town all wrapped around his little finger and is going to take Fuzzy Jones property, when Billy Carson comes to the aid of his old friend and decides to put an end to this murdering and stealing peoples ranches. There are no cowgirls in this picture at all and no singing cowboys. Charlie King made over two-hundred (200) Western Films and did a great job of standing up to Buster Crabbe. When television was appearing in most households in the 1950's all these Classic Western's could be seen on a daily basis until people got sick and tired of them. Enjoy

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.

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!