The Kid Rides Again

There's a good showdown scene about halfway through but other than that there's nothing much else to recommend about The Kid Rides Again. There isn't as much action in this as there was in previous entries, the female lead is uninteresting and the heavies just aren't heavy enough in this one, with the exception of the always great Glenn Strange. Even Fuzzy St. John's usually amusing comic relief is weak this time around, featuring one too many "sitting on nails" jokes.

In this Billy the kid tangles with some bank-robbing baddies in a town fed up with outlaws, even framed ones such as himself.

The series was beginning to wear a bit thin by 1943. Producers Releasing Corperation, probably tired of celebrating a real-life killer, changed the main character to Billy Carson and re-started the series without the Billy The Kid moniker later that year.

Buster Crabbe playing the notorious Billy The Kid again in The Kid Rides Again is on a mission to Texas to track down another notorious outlaw who robbed a train and left Billy with the blame. Yet another PRC release where the notorious outlaw is once again blamed with a crime he didn't commit. After a while I wonder if the viewers of this series were asking just what did he do to become the most notorious outlaw in the west.

One thing that was unusual for this film is that the town banker who more often than not is responsible for the local dirty deeds is an honest man and played by Edward Peil. Outlaw Glenn Strange who has gone and diversified from train robbery to cattle rustling wants to take over the mortgage on a property and Peil won't sell out to him. Strange starts a campaign to undermine the confidence in the bank and to a wartime audience who remembered the bank runs of the Depression this would have been a theme that found favor.

Crabbe and sidekick Al St. John deliver the usual goods required for a cowboy hero. Not as much action as in some of the Billy The Kid films for PRC, but a satisfactory conclusion for the front row Saturday matinée kids.