Down Texas Way

Buck Jones, Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton saddle up for yet another adventure in Monogram's Rough Rider series in Down Texas Way. The guys are getting together for Hatton's birthday, but no mention of how old he is. But Hatton's screen credits go back to the earliest days of motion pictures.

The plot is more like one in one of those Ruritanian costume dramas. Hatton's friend Jack Daley who owns most of the town that Hatton lives in is shot down like a dirty dog. He was expecting his long estranged wife to visit. But chief villain Harry Woods has a plan to send a ringer in posing as the late man's widow and inherit all. Worse than that Lois Austin the ringer is going to pretend to be the mother of Daley's son, Dave O'Brien. Boy that's the lowest kind of cur going in any western I've watched.

This one kind of creaks. Only when Austin and Hatton are on the scene does Down Texas Way have any real life. For completists only.

I've only seen two of the "Rough Riders" series--this and "Dawn on the Great Divide". I was much more impressed with "Dawn" than I am with this one. Hopefully, the other entries in the series are better than this one is.

For one thing, it's as slow as molasses. Director Howard Bretherton--who also did "Dawn"--usually moves things along much faster than he does here. As mentioned by other reviewers, it's actually hard to follow, and I got tired early on of Tim McCoy's strutting and preening. I liked Buck Jones' work far better--he had a quiet authority that I found refreshing and he didn't seem to be deliberately trying to upstage or overshadow his fellow actors. as McCoy appeared to be doing. I didn't think much of Raymond Hatton--I usually don't--and he didn't give me any reason to change my mind in this picture. It had a good supporting cast--Glenn Strange, John Merton, the great Harry Woods, Tom London, Dave O'Brien--but its leaden pace, a very poorly done shootout in a saloon and its somewhat convoluted plot all work against it. It looks rushed--at one point Tom London, playing a crooked bartender, blows one of his lines and, in typical Monogram fashion, it's left in--and it just doesn't come together at all. If "Dawn on the Great Divide" was typical of the "Rough Riders" series, then I'll be looking for more of them. If "Down Texas Way" is typical, then I won't be.