Texas Trouble Shooters

Crash (Roy Corrigan), Dusty (John 'Dusty' King) and Alibi (Max Terhune) get their vacation cut short and get involved in trouble at the Lazy W Ranch. Alibi gives them some great incentive, "A girl's there a beautiful girl". None other than Glenn Strange is involved in some shenanigans there. Julie Duncan, a real life steeplechase rider gets to showcase her great skills and her granny (Gertrude Hoffman) well plays the lovable matriarch. The best henchmen in the business Kermit Maynard and Ted Mapes are throwing plenty of lead at our heroes. Crash has a nice comic relief milk showdown with Richard Cramer and Frank Ellis.

Alibi happens upon a young man who has been attacked and left for dead. The young man, Bret Travis, begins to recover and tells of how he is travelling to a ranch that he has inherited. The problem is the only person who can verify his identity is the lawyer who contacted him. The lawyer is a man named Denby (Glen Strange). The Range Busters fear for young Travis' life so they decide to scout the ranch and investigate Denby.

Crash poses as a workman and gets a job as a foreman inside the ranch. Dusty pretends to be an old friend of the recently deceased owner of the ranch and he is invited to stay. From the inside the duo quickly learn that Denby is a crook. He has another man impersonating Travis so he can get control of the ranch. Just why does Denby want the ranch so badly? The Range Busters see it as a modest place not really worth Denby's attention. The answer to that question comes when the Range Busters find a spot in the land where oil is busting through. Evidently the land is rich in oil.

Back in the heyday of B-westerns, Republic and Monogram studios tried something unusual. Instead of offering one hero in a movie, they came up with the idea of a trio who were friends and do-gooders. The Three Mesquiteers went through many cast changes...and keeping track of all the actors is NOT easy. But with the Range Busters, they hit on a trio, or shall i say FOUR characters they used in all in their films....Dusty King, Ray Corrigan, Max Terhune and Terhune's possibly evil puppet, Elmer and they used them in the first 16 films in the series...the final 8 saw several cast changes. Yes, I did say that in one of the strangest writing decisions in westerns, they gave Terhune a ventriloquist dummy...and Elmer sometimes moves and talks on his own in a few of the films, such as in "Texas Trouble Shooters". Why they didn't get an exorcist for Elmer, I have no idea....as Elmer was REALLY creepy and annoying as well. That's one strike against this movie at the onset.

Shortly after the film begins, Max happens upon a wounded man, Bret Travis. However, oddly, shortly after this he and his friends meet another man who says HE is Bret Travis! What gives? Well, the local baddie wants land that Travis co-owns and after he thought Travis was killed, he replaced him with a compliant replacement. This means, sooner or later, the same baddies will be coming for the other co-owner, Judy. Can the Range Busters straighten all this out and bring evil to justice? What do you think??!!

Like so many westerns (particularly Hopalong Cassidy films), as soon as I saw Glenn Strange in the movie I knew he was either the evil man behind replacing Bret or was the man's evil second-in-command....he almost always played this sort of role in the 30s and 40s westerns. Oh, and when he wasn't playing these roles, he was Frankenstein's monster in 1940s horror films.

So is it any good? Yes....but nothing particularly outstanding either. Pleasant entertainment...the sort you expect from this trio...I mean, this quartet!