His Brother's Ghost

With more characterization, and more of the minor characters getting more dialogue, director Sam Newfield brings George Milton's script to very active life.

According to IMDb, despite the different names as writers, they all were actually George Milton. And he deserves the credit.

Al "Fuzzy" St. John out-does himself this time, yes, still being his acrobatically funny self, but being an introspective self, too.

Bad guy Charles King out-does himself, too, and his look of glee at some particularly dastardly deed shows just what a good actor he really was.

Buster Crabbe doesn't stretch himself, but he looks good and, of course, handles his action well.

Behind them are some of the best Western players Hollywood ever had, and PRC once again rises well above its reputation.

I highly recommend "His Brother's Ghost" and there's a good print at YouTube.

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.

After not watching westerns for two or three decades, in a fit of nostalgia I decided to watch them again. Internet Archives has quite a few of them and I selected this one – mostly because of Al St. John. Although Fuzzy having an identical twin brother is kinda a nice twist, the movie is all in all a rather pedestrian oater. However, the scene of Crabbe (Billy Carson) galloping on his horse with his arms tied was a corker. As has been pointed out previously, the business of Fuzzy peeking around the pole was unnecessary and unfunny. Although I liked Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I never did (even as a kid) warm up to him as a cowboy. My favorites were Buck Jones, Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Annie Oakley, all of who had a certain charisma, which, to me, Crabbe did not have. Still like Fuzzy though. At less than an hour, watching this movie is pleasant enough diversion.

This film is one of a series starring Buster Crabbe as Billy Carson, a rancher who spends a good portion of his time attempting to better the lives of sharecroppers and others who run afoul of varying murderous plotters; in this instance, a friend of Carson is killed and replaced by his twin brother, causing consternation amidst the villains who are convinced that the twin is a vengeful ghost. Most of this short (54 min.) work consists of two small groups of extraordinarily confident horsemen who canter about, chasing and shooting at each other, in essentially non-stop fashion; one's attention becomes drawn to spotting the interchangeability of the good and bad guys......nothing else here warrants a viewer's concentration.

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.