The Mystery of the Hooded Horsemen

There are Hooded Horsemen but not much of a mystery in The Mystery Of The Hooded Horseman. Still as this was a B picture feature for the Saturday matinée kid crowd it had a lot of riding and shooting with Tex Ritter singing a song or three for Grand National Pictures.

Tex Ritter and sidekick Horace Murphy come upon a gang of masked horsemen wearing Ku Klux Klan like hoods instead of your regular bandanna masks who shoot down and kill an old friend of Tex's father. The cowboy code demands Tex take action and he does. Of course there's some singing and a little romance with leading lady Iris Meredith.

There are a couple red herrings thrown at the audience as suspects, but it doesn't take too much to figure out who the leader is. Keep it simple for the kids and I'm sure they enjoyed it back then.

Tex Ritter's country stylings in his songs are the main reason to watch The Mystery Of the Hooded Horsemen today however.

All of your western tropes can be found in this film. Horse chases, gun fights, bar fights and Tex singing some nice country ballads. Worth a watch for fans of the western genre, but might be less appealing to the casual viewer.

Tex Ritter tries to solve the mystery of a band of hooded horsemen running roughshod over the country side around the Four Star Mine.

The movie is okay. The plot sort wanders about for the required running time before coming to an end with a chase and a shoot out. Those wishing to learn how not to film a movie chase scene should be required to watch this as good guys and bads guys come from every side of the screen without rhyme or reason. There are a few too many songs that prevent the plot from ever being fully fleshed out.Actually the plot here is more a sketch or a rough idea than an actual story. Its completely forgettable and unremarkable. Its not bad but its something you'll have forgotten five minutes after you watch it.

A Final Note: Whoever was Tex Ritter's make-up man should be shot, I spent a great deal of the movie wondering when all of the flour on his face was going to turn into a cake. Its awful and makes Ritter look like a dead refugee from the silent era.

When his old mentor is killed by black-hooded baddies with skull-and-crossbones on their chests, Tex and his sidekick Stubby head up to the old man's mine look for clues and protect the remaining miners from the mysterious gang.

Colorful villains, some decent action scenes, including a nice saloon brawl with veteran heavy Charles King, and some great songs, all make this pretty agreeable entertainment for fans of Tex Ritter and nineteen-thirties B-westerns in general.

In my opinion, Ritter was the most personable and the best singer of the Saturday matinée westerns and Grand National Pictures the best at strategically placing great songs to cover up the slow parts.

This is a mediocre western programmer, utterly unremarkable and not worth your time, except for Ritter's singing of traditional songs, particularly his rendition of "Ride Around Ye Little Dogies." The acting is more concerned with making sure that people speak clearly, and the gunfire sounds like cap pistols.