Tonight's Movie: The Boss Rider of Gun Creek (1936)

Time to watch a Buck Jones Western! This time around I caught him starring in THE BOSS RIDER OF GUN CREEK (1936).

In this 60-minute Western Buck plays a dual role. Good guy Larry Day is a rodeo rider who's accused of a murder which was actually committed by lookalike Gary Elliott.

When Larry is convicted, a friend (Harvey Clark) and the sympathetic sheriff (Tom Chatterton) let Larry go, knowing there's no way he committed a murder.

Larry's plan is to trade places with Gary in order to solve the crime. It works so well that a posse chasing Larry guns down Gary, the actual murderer; that moment is actually just a bit shocking.

From this point things get a little murky, with Larry pretending to be an amnesia victim after he saves pretty Starr Landerson (Muriel Evans) from a runaway horse. Larry discovers Gary had lent Starr money on her cattle, which then disappeared. He also learns there's a gold mine on her property!

While the first half of the film is fairly exciting, I found the second half a bit too sluggish and confusing. It has its strengths, including a spunky performance by Evans, but overall I rank it as a lesser Jones Western.

Lesley Selander directed from a script by Frances Guihan, based on a story by E.B. Mann. The movie was filmed by Herbert Kirkpatrick and Allen Thompson. Location shooting took place near Kernville, California.

THE BOSS RIDER OF GUN CREEK has recently been shown on the Encore Westerns Channel.

Previous Buck Jones reviews: JUST PALS (1920), MEN WITHOUT LAW (1930), THE DEADLINE (1931), RIDIN' FOR JUSTICE (1932), FORBIDDEN TRAIL (1932), UNKNOWN VALLEY (1933), THE MAN TRAILER (1934), BOSS OF LONELY VALLEY (1937), ARIZONA BOUND (1941), and THE GUNMAN FROM BODIE (1941).