The Great Stagecoach Robbery

The Great Stagecoach Robbery was one of the Red Ryder series from Republic Pictures. Though Herbert J. Yates's main star at this time was singing cowboy Roy Rogers not all of his stars sung. Bill Elliott was one of several actors to play the role comic book cowboy hero Red Ryder on the screen. He might be the best known of the screen Red Ryders although his nickname of Wild Bill Elliott came from playing Wild Bill Hickok in a few films.

This film was something of a shock to me as it involved the murder of a child and a deliberate one on one act of homicide. The Ryder tries to aid an outlaw played by Francis McDonald to go straight which is his intention. But other people have different ideas for McDonald.

First his two kids John James and Sylvia Arslan who idolize their outlaw father. Two of McDonald's former henchmen want to take up business as usual. But the fact that McDonald is coming back to Painted Valley to return $150.000.00 in stolen money which he hid before being arrested doesn't sit well with them at all. These two try to use the kids for their nefarious purposes.

The murder of Sylvia Arslan in a film that was designed for the Saturday matinée crowd was something I never figured to see in a Republic cowboy movie. It's all the more gruesome because the perpetrator is an authority figure. How Herbert J. Yates let this one out let alone the censors miss it is a mystery.

Considering what has transpired the Heigh-Ho Silver ending with Red Ryder and Little Beaver riding off into the sunset is a bit much. Still The Great Stagecoach Robbery is not a bad B western and you can see why the strong and personable Wild Bill Elliott was such a popular cowboy star back in the day.

Which I don't belong to.... This kind of stuff is no more no less the ancester of what will be, what will bring the TV industry one decade later. Always the same story, more or less, always the same endless ride sequences to fill up the feature length, with always the same music. Material destined to countryside audiences for second or third feature in movie theaters...I saved this one in my library on for the principle, because it is rare to find, at least at the time I purchased it, thirty years ago. It is not a bad, garbage film, but only made for a specific kind of audience, that depends of what you seek, what you like. If you wish quality, solid story, suspense, something ambiguous, brilliant, intellectual, of course you make the wrong choice. But you can watch it not to die idiot.

Francis McDonald is coming out of prison and his son and daughter are looking forward to excitement and prosperity when he returns to being a desperado. McDonald, however, says if he put as much work into being a farmer as an outlaw, they'd all be better off. Bill Elliott -- as Red Ryder -- is willing to give him a chance, but when a stagecoach is robbed and the money turns up at McDonald's place, who will believe him?

Red Ryder, based on Fred Harman's comic strip, was used as the basis for 28 movies from Republic. With Robert Blake as Little Beaver, and Alice Fleming as the Duchess, there was plenty of familiar material for the Saturday matinee crowd. If occasionally, as in this one, a child is killed -- offscreen -- it offered a rare glimpse ito a world where the stakes were high.

Elliott moved on to other, lower-rent B westerns, and Harman continued drawing the comic strip until 1964, twenty-five years, and then handed it over to others. He spent the remainder of his life doing fine, western-themed paintings. Harman was the brother of animation artist Hugh Harman. He died in 1982, age 79.

A fairly engaging entry to the durable series, however, the death of a kid - Boots Hollister- adds an edge to a series that is mainly light. Red Ryder aids an ex- convict in keeping in the straight and narrow, however, there's complications in the form of ex-convict's hotheaded son and the leader of the gang - a teacher- that has robbed the bank.