Wild Horse Phantom (1944)

Sometimes I wonder if the script meetings for these films just took last week’s and re-arranged the page numbers. This hasn’t anything remotely original about it as it allows “Billy” (Buster Crabbe) to yet again find himself blamed for a crime - this time a bank robbery - so he and trusty steed “Falcon”, diverted by some typically clowning antics from “Fuzzy” (Al St. John), have to get to the bottom of things. This does raise quite an interesting legal principle. You have cash in the bank, it gets robbed, you also owe the bank money and they want their debt settled. You can’t pay because they lost your money, but they need you to pay so they can give it back to you. Quite a conundrum, eh? Anyway, in order to get himself sorted, “Carson” has to infiltrate a deadly gang and then follow the golden thread via what might be an haunted mine and is definitely a feisty “Marian” (Janet Warren) before all hell breaks lose. The production is a shambles, the only things missing from shot are mobile phones and the continuity person was clearly enjoying one or two of the bar scenes a little too enthusiastically. It’s all formula stuff, but Crabbe makes for decent eye-candy and it’s really all about the horse, anyway.