a5c7b9f00b Tex is up against a group of hooded outlaws. When he shoots one, he uses the hood to infiltrate the gang. Almost caught by them, he escapes only to be arrested by the Sheriff who thinks he's one of the gang.
Tex Ritter tries to solve the mystery of a band of hooded horsemen running roughshod over the country side around the Four Star Mine.<br/><br/>The movie is okay. The plot sort wanders about for the required running time before coming to an end with a chase and a shoot out. Those wishing to learn how not to film a movie chase scene should be required to watch this as good guys and bads guys come from every side of the screen without rhyme or reason. There are a few too many songs that prevent the plot from ever being fully fleshed out.Actually the plot here is more a sketch or a rough idea than an actual story. Its completely forgettable and unremarkable. Its not bad but its something you'll have forgotten five minutes after you watch it.<br/><br/>A Final Note: Whoever was Tex Ritter's make-up man should be shot, I spent a great deal of the movie wondering when all of the flour on his face was going to turn into a cake. Its awful and makes Ritter look like a dead refugee from the silent era.
The ease of this charming, lively and unpretentious western has something refreshing that leaves cold the audiences jaded, spoiled by the later developments of the genre; but it's a very good movie, one that takes time to show its characters enjoying an evening, and actually showing the glitter of a river, or, earlier than that, a nice panorama (while Tex is first shown the mine and the ore). So there is the movie itself, charming, lively, unpretentious, directed with ease, and the songs, and certainly the cast (Ritter, Iris Meredith, Charles King, Dwire); the leading man's approach matches that of the movie. Tex the character is a decent everyman. His first (and, as a matter of fact, only) fistfight with one of the outlaws, in a saloon, is a very well made scene, with a sense of the choreography, and the director's ease shows also in other quirks or highlights (transitions, etc.); 'The Hooded Horsemen' has been made by a director with an assured sense of the qualities of the genre, resulting in a cheap script shoot with gusto, sense and craft, which won't appeal to the jaded fans. Maybe I was thirsty for such a movie, but I liked it very much.<br/><br/>What Tex does for the townspeople and the mine (and the cute heiress) is to assemble, to raise up a force of vigilantes against the masked riders. There is the ease, there are the songs, there is the cast, with one of those endearing actresses of the low budget westerns, who retired early from the biz. It's a movie for those who take an interest in the offer. I like songs, and I like them in movies. Not all of the performers of the old westerns were actors; some of them were showmen. The showmen from these westerns, of the '30s and '40s, were physically of three main types: the handsome (Rogers, Brown, LaRue, Starrett, Crabbe), the cool (Steele, McCoy) : those perhaps less handsome, or not as handsome, but still macho, and the common (Autry, Ritter, Boyd, E. Dean); I don't classify the greats, Mix, Jones, Cooper, Wayne, Scott, or, from later movies, Mitchum, Stewart, etc..<br/><br/>(Handsomeness never meant that much for a movie career: e.g., Mature, Harrison, Marchal or other officers or citizens of the '60s Hollywoodian Roman Empire.)