This was a lot of fun; probably the type of thing youngsters enjoyed in 1949 when it came out. I'm originally from Texas, so the geography discussed was a bit baffling. In the opening, two Texas Rangers report to their boss, who gives them an assignment in a Texas town called "Willcox." Of course, there's no such place, but this is a movie, so we play along. One of the rangers asks, "Well, where is Willcox?" His boss walks over to a big map of Texas on the wall, points to an area around Wichita Falls, and says, "It's in the northern part of the state, up near the mountains." That got me laughing because there are no mountains anywhere near there. But there's more... When the two rangers get to a ranch on the outskirts of "Willcox," they pose as out of work cowboys and tell the woman who owns the ranch they were headed to town to look for jobs. She tells them Willcox is a bad place. Instead, they should ride on to Marfa. "It's only a couple hours' ride from here." Marfa, in far west Texas, is, to say the least, a lot farther away than a two-hour ride, whether a person is riding on a horse or in a Cadillac. Either a script writer was having some fun, or the Ranger boss pointed to the wrong area of the state when he described Willcox. In a major film, these would be awful, but they're nit picky details for a B movie, and easy to overlook. Especially when the ranch owner is Marjory Lord, who would play Danny Thomas's wife in the 50's TV sitcom, "Make Room for Daddy," and one of her cousins is played by handsome Clayton Moore, sans his Lone Ranger mask. Tim Holt stars in this, riding a Palomino dressed out in silver trimmed tack. Ha! A bit flashy for an out of work cowboy.
Review of Masked Raiders
