REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

   For the titles, see below. Cast: James “Shamrock” Ellison, Russell “Lucky” Hayden, Raymond Hatton, “Fuzzy” Knight, Julie (later Julia) Adams, Tom Tyler, George J Lewis, John Cason, Stanley Price, Dennis Moore, George Chesebro, Bud Osborne, and Stanford Jolley. Written by Ron Ormond and Maurice Tombragel . Directed by Thomas Carr.

1. HOSTILE COUNTRY. 1950.

2. MARSHAL OF HELDORADO. 1950.

3. CROOKED RIVER. 1950.

4. COLORADO RANGER. 1950.

5. FAST ON THE DRAW. 1950.

6. WEST OF THE BRAZOS. 1950.

   Six movies with the same set of credits. There’s a story here.

   About the time William Boyd achieved TV stardom with his old Hopalong Cassidy movies, producer Robert Lippert hit upon the notion of making a little cash with the erstwhile sidekicks of Hoppy’s salad days, James Ellison and Russell Hayden. (For background on Lippert, see my review of MAN BAIT.)

   Lippert announced his new series with all due fan-fare: Press releases about multi-year contracts and big-budget Western epics… then proceeded to make all six films in a month(!) using the same actors in the same costumes on the same sets and locations, playing the same roles, or analogous ones, in all six entries.

   Actually, the first three aren’t bad, as B-westerns go. The action is plentiful, the actors show a certain chemistry playing off each other, and there’s a sly, subtle humor flirting about the edges of the scripts. HELDORADO offers James Ellison a chance to masquerade as an Eastern Dude, just as William Boyd did from time to time in the Hoppy series, and the result is pleasingly humorous.

   With COLORADO RANGER, a sort of carelessness began to creep in, betrayed at first by a bit of mis-matched footage from a Bob Steele Western in COLORADO RANGER. FAST ON THE DRAW opens with about ten minutes of “Prologue” made up of unrelated stock footage (a favorite ploy of writer Ormond’s) that meanders into a tired story of Shamrock Ellison seeking out the criminal mastermind behind the murder of his parents — the guilty one turns out to be not only the least likely suspect but also the least convincing. WEST OF THE BRAZOS, which opens with the same footage as FAST ON THE DRAW, brought the series slouching to a close.

   Which is kind of a shame, actually. There was an abundance of talent here, some beloved faces, and an indefinable sense of sheer Fun in the early entries. Just a shame Lippert – who never wasted a penny foolishly, or ever spent one wisely—couldn’t see what he had and do better by it.