Outlaws of the Desert

I used to enjoy Hopalog Cassidy on early fifties tv with the made for tv 30 min. shows. I had never seen any of his theatrical movies that were made from 1935 to 1948 as these were never shown on tv. Well now on the Westerns Channel they are showing a couple of the 66 movies a month. Most of them are very entertaining as the Hoppy character brings back memories plus it shows a somewhat tougher Hoppy than on tv. This movie however is awful. There is almost no western action and most of it takes place in Arabia (Cal. desert) and cheap backlots and studios made to look like outside desert locations. If this had been the first Hoppy movie I'd ever seen I would never bothered to watch any more. Luckily I have seen enough good ones to remember they are out there and to continue watching hoping to see some better ones than this.

While this is probably a poor picture relative to others made at the same time, it has a great deal of sociological and historical value. U.S. citizens at the time knew little more about Saudi Arabia than they do today, and the perspectives are demeaning and arrogant. Their tribal cultures are seen through the concept of native American tribes. However, there are some good comic moments.

I give this film 6 stars only because I know they were trying something different for a change, unfortunately, it just didn't work. Taking Hoppy out of the west is a risky move! They even tried dressing him up as the Sheik in one scene, William Boyd was a fine actor, but even he couldn't save this one. An almost unrecognisable Duncan Renaldo plays a Sheik, years before his Cisco Kid makeover, Andy Clyde tries to lighten things up with a bit of humour, but you can't help but keep hoping Hoppy would get the hell out of there, and back to the old west where he belongs! Well, at least they tried I suppose!

I doubt Outlaws Of The Desert got any closer to Arabia than the Mojave. But this film has Hopalong Cassidy and his two sidekicks Brad King and Andy Clyde going to Arabia to do a little horse trading. They are acting as agents for Forrest Stanley to purchase some Arabian stock to blend with his ranch horses. Stanley is along with his wife Nina Guilbert and daughter Jean Phillips. I can think of much better places for a little getaway myself.

Anyway this family gets victimized by a pair of con artists Albert Morin and Luli Deste. Good thing Hoppy was along and an even better thing he made friends with the local sheik Duncan Renaldo doing his best at a Rudolph Valentino imitation. In fact Renaldo was one of a number of players brought in to be cut rate Valentinos when Rudy was at his height.

I can't think of anything looking sillier I've seen in a while than Bill Boyd, Andy Clyde and Brad King in their western costume riding through the Arabian desert with all those native peoples. They looked so ridiculously out of place.

Only for die-hard Hoppy fans.

I'm a big Hoppy fan & like everything Hoppy's ever been in, except for this film. The previous reviewer (who stated that this is the worst of the Hoppy films) is correct. There's much more bad about it than what's good about it. I don't care for the "exotic" Arabian locales, I like my westerns to be set in the American west. Seeing William Boyd dressed in Arabic robes made him seem somewhat ridiculous! I prefer Hoppy in his all- black outfit (translation= "ready to take care of business"), but here he wore a gray shirt with black pants & hat, then got into the robes, & that just doesn't do it for me! Here are the positive points of this film: it starts out in Gila-Bend, which is nice; Hoppy identifies himself as a "county Deputy Sheriff"; California gets to ride Topper for a few minutes while Hoppy is breaking in a horse. That's it, even the comedy from California is weak. On the negative side, we have: the clothes issue (above), the absurdity of traveling to Arabia with Topper in tow (& I assume his side-kicks' horses as well), the very slow pace, the unexciting action sequences (3 gunfights, but apparently no one is even so much as wounded in any of them), the song by Brad King (although he's far from the worst of Hoppy's young sidekicks, see Jay Kirby & Jimmy Rogers for that "honor"), & the miscasting of Duncan Renaldo (TV's "Cisco Kid," who I like a lot) as an Arabic Sheik (whose Spanish accent creeps through at times, although he was "educated in

England"!). There's really not much to recommend here. As of this writing, imdb voters gave it a 7+ rating, which makes it one of the higher rated Hoppy movies. That's hard to believe, because there's 65 other Hoppy movies out there that are better than this one! This is the only film of Hoppy's that I'd rate below a 5/10, & I give it a 3/10.