The Saturday matinee crowd got two cowboy stars for the price of one in this lavishly budgeted western serial starring former singing cowboy Dick Foran and Buck Jones. The latter contributed deadpan humor to the proceedings, making Jones perhaps the highest paid B-western comedy relief in history. The two heroes defend the Death Valley borax miners from an outlaw gang headed by Wolf Reade. An extraordinarily strong cast -- for a serial, at least -- supported the stars, headed by Charles Bickford as Reade, Leo Carillo, Lon Chaney, Jr., and silent screen star Monte Blue. Leading lady Jeanne Kelly later changed her name to Jean Brooks and starred in the atmospheric RKO thriller The Seventh Victim (1943). Universal claimed to have spent $1 million on this serial and made sure to get their money's worth by endlessly recycling the action footage in serials and B-westerns for years to come.
The "gentleman" is played by John King, but the star of the show is J. Farrell McDonald, cast as a chronic gambler named Coburn. When the old man loses every penny he has, wandering cowboy Pokey (King) comes to the rescue by grooming a wild stallion for a successful racetrack career. Everything comes to a head during the climactic Big Race, with the expected (but still satisyfing) results. Ruth Reece and Joan Barclay share the leading-lady responsibilities, while the villainy is in the capable hands of Monogram's ace utility actor Craig Reynolds.
The U.S. Army needs more horses for the Spanish-American War. Hoppy must turn his Bar 20 cowhands into Rough Riders to gather up the horses, and of course bad guys try to sabotage the operation.
Ellen Saunders is an heiress on a cruise to Europe being pursued by a day laborer mistaken for a prominent mining engineer. During the cruise, he foils two crooks trying to get their hands on her lucrative nickel mine.
