Wild Horse Phantom (1944)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

One of the stranger of the Billy Carson series of PRC B westerns, starring Buster Crabbe as Billy, and Al St. John as Fuzzy. Here, Billy, as a US marshal, is charged with finding and returning $50,000. stolen from the Piedmont bank. Unless this is returned pronto, the bank has the option of foreclosing on various ranches, where the rancher's savings was included in the stolen money. Toward this end, Billy made arrangements to allow the 4 members of the gang that stole the money to escape from prison, in hopes they would make a bee line to where the money was hidden. In fact, this is what they did. First, they got a forced ride in a 1940s car to the point where they had somehow arranged for 5 horses to be brought, the 5th for Tom, a non-member whom they forced to join them. Apparently, they hoped to make him the 5th gang member, but he preferred to return to the security of prison life. Hence, he was shot in the back as he rode away. He did manage to crawl to the cabin of his friend Fuzzy, which just happened to be near by, before he died. Billy soon arrived, and convinced Fuzzy to accompany him looking for the money. They somehow got on the right trail of the gang, which led them to the old played-out Wild Horse goldmine. When they arrived, they heard the gang discussing that the money wasn't where the boss, Daggert, remembered putting it. Was his memory faulty, or had someone stolen it? They speculated that they might be in the wrong tunnel. Then, a ghostly laugh was heard, which upset Fuzzy, and they were discovered, and tied up. After the gang left for another tunnel, a phantom cut Fuzzy's rope with a knife, so he could untie Billy. Billy followed the mine owner, and possible phantom, out of the mine , to his nearby house, where they talked about the stolen money. Meanwhile, Fuzzy was scared out of his wits by a giant bat-like screaming flying creature. He picked up an axe, ran around with it, finally plunging it into the wall of the mine. Low and behold, he finds currency, a lot of it, behind the wall! But, soon, Ed Garnet(whom Fuzzy had not met) showed up in back of him, with a gun. Fuzzy dropped the money and ran. Meanwhile, elsewhere in and around the mine, the gang members were getting testy because Daggart couldn't find the money. So, he shot 2 members, killing one immediately, while the other escaped out of the tunnel, encountered Daggart, and shot him before dying. Meanwhile, Fuzzy had captured and roped the last member of the gang. Now, Billy had to convince Garnet to give up the money, if he had it. Did Garnet find the money where Daggart hid it, and rehide it behind the wall, where Fuzzy accidentally found it?? At first, Ed refused, but Billy appealed to his sense of community, and he gave in. Now, Billy had to rush to town and give the money to the banker before his noon deadline. If this sounds interesting, see it at YouTube.

Crabbe may get top billing, but the star is goofy St. John. I doubt any comic relief in Westerns gets more screen time than the toothless clown in this oddity. It's like they don't have enough 60-minutes of script, so his antics have to fill the bill. The plot's a standard one-- our hero has to get stolen money before the ruthless banker forecloses on area ranchers. What makes this oater different is that most of the action takes place in a darkened mine tunnel where the money's hidden. The pit's also inhabited by a big flying bat and crazy laughter. Too bad these weren't played up more, which would have really distinguished this bottom row production (PRC). As it stands, Crabbe's broad-shouldered, St. John's fitfully funny, and the 60-minutes mostly amounts to a silly oddity.

Wild Horse Phantom which incidentally has nothing to do with wild horses opens in what you would think is a modern setting in a prison. Some stock footage from a prison picture is used showing Kermit Maynard and his gang escaping. But it's all part of a plan set up by Buster Crabbe so that Maynard will lead the gang to the loot he stashed from his last job.For some reason some kid is forced to come along even though he's not part of the gang and he's shot when he wants to go back. As he's a friend of Crabbe's sidekick Al St. John that makes it personal.At the same time a skinflint banker is trying to foreclose on ranches in the area. It was his bank that got robbed and the depositors were those said ranchers. They can't pay on their mortgages so he's cleaning up.All the action takes place in an old mine where Maynard stashed the loot and where everybody's looking for it.The inconsistencies of time and place are really bad even for a poverty row PRC release. At the same time the comedy of Al St. John truly redeems this film somewhat. Fuzzy's fight with Bela Lugosi's Devil Bat also a PRC release is hilarious. Might be worth tuning in for that alone.

"Wild Horse Phantom" is the only film in this series of "Billy Carson" westerns that is set in the modern (1940's) West. Or is for a short time only. It opens with PRC stock shots of a prison break, with searchlights, tommy-guns, electric light fixtures in the Warden's office and a getaway car for the five escaping convicts. Once the convicts trade the car for horses, it all back to the 1880-90's West the rest of the series is set in.This one has Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe),following instructions from the Governor, and the Prison Warden (John Elliott) watching over a planned-by-them prison break by a convict, Link Daggett (Kermit Maynard) and his gang members, Kallen (Frank Ellis), Moffett (Frank McCarroll) and Lucas (Bob Cason), and they also force a young convict with only a short time to serve, Tom Hanlon (Robert Meredith), to go along with them. The only reason for the fifth man seems to be just to give Daggett a chance to show how bad he is by shooting him in the back when he rides off to return to prison. But the kid lives long enough to crawl to a cabin and, there, finds Fuzzy Jones (Al St. John), and dies in his arms. Fuzzy, in addition to being Billy's sidekick, is also Hanlon's cousin, and this gives Fuzzy, besides stretching coincidence to the max, a chance to enact a dramatic scene.Anyhow, it seems that Daggett and his gang robbed a bank of $100,000 and were caught and sent to prison, but the money wasn't recovered. This bank also was not a member of the FDIC, and now all the ranchers around Piedpont face eviction and loss of their mortgaged property by the banker whose bank was robbed, and they could have covered these notes and mortgages if this uninsured bank had not been robbed and they all lost their savings and seed-milk-and-egg money in the robbery. And the banker (Hal Price) wants his money or their property.So, the gang is allowed to break prison( via 1940's stock footage) and Billy is going to follow them and recover the stolen money.This 'un has way too much plot. That's what happens when the two writers, George W. Sayre and Milt Raison, share just one billing credit as George Milton. Complications arise when the gang heads for the "Wild Horse" mine, where the loot was hidden in a tunnel wall, and the loot is no longer there. But this mine has lots of tunnels, so Link decides he forgot just which tunnel he hid it in. But it turns out he had the right tunnel, but the rancher who lives around the corner and up the hill, Ed Garnet (Budd Buster), has been poking around the mine and has a finders-keepers attitude regarding the money he found hidden there.Billy and Fuzzy come along, get captured, escape, get captured again, escape again and there is a series of in-and-out of the tunnels Keystone Kop chases, or as close as one can get when there are only two tunnels involved and the camera has to be moved from one side or the other to give the impression of more tunnels. Plus, one of the fake bats-on-a-wire from PRC's "Devil Bat" feature gets a cameo, and Fuzzy gets to play scared-for-laughs some.This one is watched only when the viewer doesn't have a B-western from Republic, Universal, Columbia, Monogram, Victory, Reliable, or Normandy to watch. Viewed in that context, it's okay.