Trail Dust

Like many of the series B-westerns of the 1930s and 40s, in the 1950s Hopalong Cassidy's movies were chopped down for television. The same is true of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry's movies...and sometimes you can find two versions of their films...an abbreviated one that runs about 50-55 minutes and the longer versions, usually about 65-70 minutes long. In the case of "Trail Dust", it was chopped down as well but I managed to find the original 76 minute version on YouTube. And, surprisingly, the quality of the print is terrific.

The plot of "Trail Dust" is very simple. Hoppy and his friends Windy (Gabby Hayes) and Dusty (James Ellison) are driving much needed cattle to a part of the country that is hungry and desperately in need of food. But scattered among the men are some jerks who are trying to prevent the cowboys from reaching their destination. In addition, folks outside the cattle drive also do their best to interrupt them from their duty. Can Hoppy and his friends manage to stop these baddies and save the day?

This is a very good B-western. Much of it is because the story is simple and not cluttered with too much plot nor distractions. I also appreciated how good the camerawork was in this one...Paramount Pictures wasn't trying to make a bargain basement western here! I also loved the scene with Hayes and Ellison where Gabby was trying to teach him how to woo a woman! Hilarious! All in all, an enjoyable western....one that also surprised me at how tough it was. Hoppy had to shoot several baddies in this one....and not always with those non-life threatening shots you too often see in this sort of thing.

Hoppy, Windy and Johnny get the herd through to the starving townsfolk despite the best efforts of the bad guys to thwart them! Based on a Mulford novel, this one has a more interesting and solid plot than most series entries. The photography is awesome and the trail drive convincing.

Gabby (Windy) gets a chunkier role than usual - he even gets shot - James Ellison displays the requisite amount of charm as he woos Gwynne Shipman and Hoppy was never more authoritative. The sinister Morris Ankrum is just one of a formidable array of baddies - how could he be anything else? - and there are a couple of good songs, apparently sung by Ellison although I stand to be corrected.

This is high quality entertainment, possibly the best of the 66.

Hoppy, mindful of the famine threatening the country, persuades other ranchers to combine their herds and offer them at a fair price to a relief committee sent to buy cattle to feed a starving population. Cidy leads a collective cattle drive, but greedy profiteers set out to sabotage his efforts, and they'll kill any man brave enough to stand in their way.

An above average Hoppy which features some great cinematography, a vivid description of the harshness and struggles of a cattle drive. You really feel you are there, feeling the dust as you steer those dogies. There's some good action, and a tense climax with dynamite placed on a gorge, ready to go off.

It's almost as though the other reviewers here were reviewing another movie than the one I saw. It was decent, and perhaps pretty good for the time it was made (1936), but I found it pretty creaky, mediocre, almost juvenile with all the Windy-Johnny banter.

For me, one sign of a weak adventure movie is seeing the hero easily start a brush fire to deter the bad guys, here the bad guy's herd of cattle.

Another thing that threw me was that Hoppy suddenly is convinced to organize a cattle drive to deliver cheap food to a hungry town. I couldn't understand why it would make any difference as to whose herd reached that town first -- benevolent Hoppy's herd (which would be sold by Hoppy for a fair low price) or a greedy bad guy's rival herd (who would charge a lot for his cattle). What was the rush? Why should a day or two matter? Hoppy could have easily sent a horseback rider to the town, telling the townspeople to wait for Hoppy's inexpensive cattle.

It's a Depression time in the old west just as it was for the movie going public when Trail Dust came out in 1936. The price of beef cattle is sky high and a greedy rancher played by Morris Ankrum wants to keep the price high. So he looks askance when a relief committee seeks to buy cattle for relief purposes, including the herd from the Bar 20 Ranch where Hopalong Cassidy is the foreman.

Hoppy and the gang have to drive the herd to the railroad terminal to be paid. Ankrum's one ruthless dude however. He joins the trail drive under an alias and continues any number of nefarious schemes to prevent Hoppy's herd from arriving.

Of course Bill Boyd, Jimmy Ellison and Gabby Hayes are up to the challenge. Trail Dust is a bit unusual in that Hoppy is for once dealing with a plot that involves his chosen profession, ranch foreman. Most of the Cassidy features involve him getting in all kinds of circumstances that have nothing to do with being foreman of the Bar 20. Perhaps this one sticks to the trail because it is taken directly from one of Clarence Mulford's novels.

The plot involving a depression and relief certainly struck the right note with a 1936 movie audience. Trail Dust holds up fairly well today for B western film of the time.