Potro Selvagem

In order to escape trouble in a town that doesn't take kindly to vagrancy, Roy Rogers and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams pretend to be entertainers hired for a party at a local ranch, where they talk themselves into a job. When the kindly ranch owner is killed trying to break a wild horse, Roy and company try to save the horse from being destroyed by the ranch's soon-to-be new owner.

An okay and offbeat (at least for Roy Rogers) cowboy melodrama, this is pleasant enough, with an unusual (and unusually loose) plot that does away with the usual "Roy versus armed heavies" storyline in favor of laid back horse-play and an abundance of song and dance numbers, some of which are pretty odd.

There's some really nice location photography and good horse-riding stunts that show why Trigger was so popular.

This is also a good showcase for co-star Duncan Renaldo, who a few years later would gain great fame as The Cisco Kid in movies and television.

Like so many of the Roy Rogers films, this one was trimmed to fit television time slots in the 1950s. Most of these films had about 8-10 minutes shaved off. However, "Hands Across the Border" was more heavily edited--with 20 minutes deleted. It also has a lousy print--very dark in some parts, very faded in others. My review is for this expurgated version. It's very possible the full-length version is better...or not.

Roy seems to have the magical ability to read people and animals in this outing. When he meets up with Guinn Williams' character, he's on the run from the law and threatens to shoot Roy--but Roy knows he's not a bad guy and comes to his aid. The same with Trigger. This horse reportedly killed its owner--but Roy just seems to magically know the horse is a winner and sets out to prove it to everyone.

In addition to the plot involving a competition in which Roy and Trigger compete, there is STILL a lot of singing and dancing in this one. I assume the full version had more...which is hard to believe! For instance, the last 12 minutes all is taken up by a singing, dancing pageant--and the plot itself is resolved only 40 minutes into the film! This makes for a very, very slow final portion of the movie. All in all, this film was so heavily hacked to pieces, it's hard to love.

One of my all time favorite Roy Rogers movies. I love the music and catchy tunes in this movie. Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers add to the music and plot. I have the full length version and just love the musical ending. Republic Pictures loaded Roy's movies with musical numbers from 1943-1945 after the head of the studio saw Oklahoma on Broadway and I am glad he did. Everyone looks great and the scenery is wonderful.

I compare this movie with several others Roy made around that time including Song of Nevada (1944), San Fernando Valley (1944) and Utah (1945) which had a lot of music and songs and are wonderful to watch. Try and get the complete versions and not the 54 minute edited for TV versions.

The oater's an incredible mish-mash except for Roy and Trigger discovering one another in roughhouse fashion. It's only a cowboy flick in a really extended sense. There's some good eastern Sierra scenery and plenty of hard-riding, but no flying-fists, fast-guns, bad-guy showdowns, or other cowboy trademarks. Instead, there's plenty of stagey singing and dancing, and a story-line with all the film editing coherence of broken glass. For me, the best feature was the leggy chorus girls in the last part. But that's just my old-guy hormones kicking in. Anyway, the flick's no favor to Roy, except for pairing him up with the Wonder Horse Trigger, a pairing that would last a lifetime. Together, they would go on to a memorable career as a team, one that happily leaves this mess in the dust.

Hands Across the Border (1944)

** (out of 4)

HANDS ACROSS THE BORDER has the reputation of being one of Roy Rogers' worst film but I'm not quite certain I'd go that far. It's certainly one of the strangest ones I've seen and I only viewed the edited TV version, which was missing a few of the musical numbers but more on that in a bit. The "story" has Rogers and Teddy Bear (Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams) getting a job on a ranch but when the owner is killed after being thrown from Trigger, Rogers must convince the man's daughter not to have the horse killed. Yeah, that's pretty much the entire story to be found in this film. It's easy to see why so many people might hate this movie as it often gets attacked for having way too much music and not enough action or story. In the TV version I watched there were countless musical numbers so it's pretty amazing that a few are still missing. I'd be lying if I said this was one of the worst Westerns I've ever seen because it's really not close to being that bad. With that said, the entire film is pretty much a waste for a number of reasons. The biggest is certainly the lack of any real story. I'm sure many fans came to this picture at least expecting some sort of action but we really never get any. The story seems to be all over the place because when we're introduced to Williams he is having people chase him but it never makes much sense why or why when they catch up they believe he's a different person than who they were chasing. It also doesn't make sense that the Onslow Stevens character is made to be the bad guy but then this here goes nowhere. The entire story is a real mess but it's not helped by the fact that the majority of the music numbers aren't very catchy and just come across as bland. Rogers is good in his role, as usual, but Williams isn't nearly as effective as he usually is and even Stevens appears to be bored. Ruth Terry isn't too bad as the love interest but the screenplay gives her very little to do. HANDS ACROSS THE BORDER will probably disappoint Rogers fans but I think fans of the weird, such as myself, might get some mild entertainment out of the strangeness.