His Brother's Ghost

In His Brother's Ghost, Al St. John takes center stage as both Fuzzy Jones and his twin brother Andy, a rancher besieged by villains trying to take over his spread.

Mortally wounded, he sends for Fuzzy, who then teams up with Billy Carson to battle the bad guys by dressing as his now dead brother and playing ghost to frighten the superstitious baddies into spilling the beans on their mystery employer.

Another typical entry in Producers Releasing Corporation's Billy Carson series, this has some okay action and St. John is great, really getting to show off his acting skills in the scenes where Andy lays dying.

Another great scene has Fuzzy staring through a window and getting a rise from a dim-witted gunman, disappearing into the darkness before the frightened man's companions can notice.

However, His Brother's Ghost hits a low point (for the film and the series) when Fuzzy hides behind a skinny wooden post and pokes out his head and shoulders a' la Looney Tunes. That was just too silly, even for a Saturday morning matinée western!

Only an incredibly stupid piece of script that allows Buster Crabbe to walk into an outlaw trap, though he does break away prevents this from being one of the best of PRC series. His Brother's Ghost has Al St. John playing Fuzzy Q. Jones and his brother Andy. Andy dies though he takes his time doing it, expiring from a gunshot wound. But not before he sets up a plan to trap the outlaws. I haven't seen this long running a death since the serial Tim Tyler's Luck where Al Shean takes two chapters to take the big trip.

Andy Jones maybe with the angels, but nobody's quite sure of that as Fuzzy starts being seen around and scaring the pants off the members of a gang trying to drive homesteaders out of the valley. Veteran western villain Charles King heads the gang which has some local so called respectable community members as part of their plot. Of course Buster Crabbe takes care of them all in the end with his usual alacrity and dispatch.

If you're a fan of Al St. John's slap saddle humor than this is the film for you.

Released in 1945 - His Brother's Ghost is just one of many, many Hollywood B-Westerns that turned me, as a youngster, into a devoted Cowboy-Junkie as I sat for hours in front of the TV set completely fascinated and entertained by these low-budget, rip-roarin' tales of the Old West.

With its simple, straight-forward story that pitted the good guys against the bad guys, His Brother's Ghost also contained elements of comedy which certainly helped to move this gun-happy tale along at a light-hearted pace.

Starring ex-Flash Gordon dude, Buster Crabbe (as good guy, Billy Carson), His Brother's Ghost tells the story of a crooked gang of ruthless marauders who are terrorizing the region by systematically murdering landowners and then taking possession of their ranches and farms.

When these cut-throat bandits kill Andy Jones (Fuzzy's brother), Billy Carson decides to enlist Fuzzy as the ghost of his brother in order to frighten these easily-scared bad guys off.

With this plan set into motion, Billy hopes to expose the gang-leader's identity, and thus bring peace to the valley and restore the stolen property to the rightful owners.

Filmed in b&w, His Brother's Ghost had a very brief running time of only 52 minutes.

This poverty-row picture was directed by Sam Newfield who, throughout the 1930s & 40s, literally turned out hundreds of similar, fast-paced B-Westerns with such titles as Stagecoach Outlaws, Prairie Badmen and Thundering Gunslingers.

During the 1930s-1950s, Hollywood made 147283401324 B-westerns--such as those with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. However, there were many, many more B series westerns as well with the likes of Hopalong Cassidy, Lash LaRue, the Cisco Kid and many, many others.

This film stars Larry "Buster" Crabbe--ex-Olympic swimming champion and low-rent actor who played Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in serials. While few would know it today, he actually made quite a few low-budget westerns and west definitely NOT among the better movie cowboys--though he was tall and had nice clean clothes. Now considering that "His Brother's Ghost" was made by one of the crappiest of the 'Poverty Row' studios, it's actually surprisingly good--which, really, isn't saying much! After all, most of these series films really didn't have great plots nor were the actors that great either. They were simply churned out by the dozen and undiscerning audiences loved 'em.

In this film, despite Crabbe getting top billing, the star seems to be Al St. John. If you don't know, St. John was one of Fatty Arbuckle's relatives and played his foil in many silent comedies. In the 1930s and 40s, St. John had re-invented himself as a cowboy sidekick and was kept very busy in this capacity.

The film starts with the usual rich baddies trying to run out all the ranchers. One of the most recalcitrant of the ranchers is play by St. John and the other ranchers look to him to lead a fight against the forces of evil. But, when he is killed, the cause for niceness is given a severe blow. Crabbe, though, has an idea--to get St. John's identical twin(!) to pretend to be him! This is very contrived but also a bit funny--injecting a tiny bit of life into this otherwise routine film. While you might balk at my giving it a 3, most of these films deserved 3s as they lacked imagination and depth and were meant mostly for little kids.

I really like this fairly short little movie. There's always something interesting about old comic "haunted" Westerns (even more-so when it isn't a "real" haunting). Al St. John effortlessly steals the show from Buster Crabbe and the absurdity of supposed twins (living away from each other) having identical beards doesn't really spoil it either.

I also really like the titles and credits; the hand turning the pages (as in "Cat Ballou") of a big, interesting book, and that quick fumble of the title page. (I guess they could only do one take, heh, but it looks like they still practiced for a while.)

The plot basically involves Al St. John in two roles, playing both Andy Jones and his twin brother who comes in to take over after Andy is shot, who plays the vengeful ghost angle rather amusingly against Thorn and his men, who are killing the sharecroppers. Fully enjoyable, even though much of the spoken line continuity makes little sense. For example, the brother having to be told that he is to play Andy's ghost after he already scares off two of Thorn's men by merely walking into the room and saying "boo", and an odd line about convincing them that Andy is "still alive" (contrary to the ghost angle) and the idea of the somewhat bumbling Andy having more ability to organize than many men working together (which is actually why Andy called Billy in in the first place).

Some chair and wardrobe busting up during a fight in the final third. It wouldn't be Western without that.

The music is pretty good as well and fits just right, and there's a better than average (and highly amusing) feel-good ending.

Funny lines (what it SOUNDS like to me, anyway):

Doc (seeming to partially forget his lines): "We didn't expect - all these...mer-ders...Thorn."

Thorn: "Well what DID you expect? You hired me to get rid of the sharecroppers and I'm doing it."

Doc: "Aw, I goes it's all-what (all-right?)..."

There's one part near the end that almost made me fall out of my chair laughing; somehow a couple people "see" that it isn't really Andy Jones, even though it is the SAME actor, looking exactly the same. Heh.

"You better talk or that mug of yours is going to look like a spoiled custard pie..." Hahaha.

8/10