User Reviews

US Marshal Cheyenne Davis as played by Lash LaRue is sent to an area undercover to find out why law and order is breaking down. The answer is quite simple, there ain't any law and order there, it's been taken over by the outlaws. As Gabby Hayes said to John Wayne in one of his best westerns Tall In The Saddle, he's all for law and order, but depends on who's dishing it out.

This film has the highly original concept of having the villain be the local wholesale grocer. The way he's treating the folks around there, destroying competition and charging outrageous prices, you'd think his trading post was on an Indian reservation.

When Steve Clark head of the vigilantes set up to fight these crooks is killed Lash and sidekick Al St. John go into action. Of course pretty Jennifer Holt as Clark's daughter is an added inducement.

Villain George Chesebro is an especially mean and petty villain so the way LaRue deals with him with a bullwhip in the end must have been quite satisfying to film audiences.

Not a bad LaRue film for the poverty row Producer's Releasing Corporation.

A light and lively musical score is just what was needed to keep this Lash LaRue feature moving along for it's one hour run time. The basic plot is one you don't see too often in a B Western - local vigilantes band together to bring down a crooked town boss who's attempting to monopolize the food supply and set high prices to fatten his own bankroll. In this case, the vigilantes are actually the good guys, led by a local rancher who's fed up with villain Price Taylor (George Chesebro). When Lash and sidekick Fuzzy Q. Jones (Fuzzy St. John) arrive on the scene, it takes them a while to put the pieces together to smoke out the bad guys.

Whenever I watch these flicks from back in the day, I like to keep my eye on the cost of things to get a sense of life in simpler times. Usually you'll catch something like a cup of coffee for a nickel or breakfast for a quarter. That will give you an idea how outrageous Taylor's prices were for basic staples, like four dollars a pound for bacon and a dollar and a half a pound for beans. Why that's about what we're paying for groceries today!

There's other goofy stuff going on too, like the sheriff requiring that Cheyenne (LaRue) get a court order to speak to a prisoner. Just a few scenes before, Cheyenne brought in the same prisoner, so why all the formality?

As usual, whenever Chey and his partner get together, Fuzzy has some kind of gimmick to keep things interesting. In this one, he writes poetry, not very good mind you, but he's always testing his rhyming skills. Later on, he winds up using a discredited CIA torture technique to get one of the bad guys to talk - he tickles his feet!

LaRue's pictures for PRC generally relied on a revolving cast of regulars. Joining him in this one was Jennifer Holt, who also appeared in "Stage to Mesa City" and "Ghost Town Renegades". The main villain George Chesebro was also the evil town boss in "Cheyenne Takes Over" and "Return of the Lash".