a5c7b9f00b Since the first covered wagon pioneers came west, the Adams family has bred fine horses on their ranch near Buckaroo ad bronze statues of succeeding generations of Adams men stand in the town square. Their horses have always been famous and until recent years regularly won the government cavalry horse reward. The current holder of the family name, Jeff Adams (Joseph Crehan) is proud of his horses and the ranch but he prefers gambling to business; so, for several years, he has let the contract for horses slide into the hands of suave and shifty Buckaroo businessman Brock Danver (Onslow Stevens) who has his eyes set on the Adams ranch and means to get control of it. He also has an eye on Jeff&#39;s pretty, stage-struck daughter Kim (Ruth Terry.) Roy Rogers (Roy Rogers), a light-hearted, foot-loose , singing cowboy rides into town&gt;Kim likes Roy&#39;s singing, and save him from being thrown into jaila saddle-tramp sans cash, by Danver&#39;s stooge-sheriff Mac Marclay (LeRoy Mason) - she gives Roy and his brawny pal Teddy Bear (Guinn &quot;Big Boy&quot; Williams) jobswranglers on the Adams ranch. Roy soon catches onto Danver&#39;s scheme to wreck to wreck the Adams horse-raising business in order to further his own prospects , and sets about thwarting Danver&#39;s plot. Jeff Adams , tempted by Danver to ride a half-wild stallion Trigger (Trigger) for a five-hundred dollar bet. Jeff is killed in the ride and Danver orders Trigger shot. But Roy defies the orderhe knows Danver wants the horse shot to destroy the Adams&#39; best blood-line and hides Trigger in a faraway meadow in the hills. Under Roy&#39;s patient training and handling, Trigger becomes a fine, usable horse. Meanwhile, Danver takes control of The Adams&#39; family business affairs, and persuades Kim that it would be useless for her to continue ownership of te ranch, and offers to take it over for nothing–-in settlement of the debts and mortgages her father ran up in Danver&#39;s crooked gambling house. Then, Roy steps in. Horse breeders Adams and Brock are vying for the Army contract. When Adams is killed trying to ride his horse Trigger, Roy saves the horse from being shot. He trains him and then plans to ride him in the race to win the contract. Sure this was lacking on plot but during World War Two and especially in 1944 at the height of the conflict people needed an escape from the war news for an hour. This is filled with 1940&#39;s music, more so than other Rogers films. This reviewer saw the MCA-TV edited version and a lousy quality copy at that so missed some of the cut musical numbers removed so stations could run their several minutes of commercials back in the 1950&#39;s and 1960&#39;s. The location photography at the Alabama Hills in Lone Pine California even looked good on the lousy quality copy I saw and I&#39;m sure looks great in a newly restored version. The story was the race for the Army horse contract seen in numerous other westerns and sort of a &quot;how Roy got Trigger&quot; plot also–but a lot of loose ends were never explained; Guinn Big Boy Williams could have been used more in this; but who cared back in 1944–They wanted to hear the music and I&#39;m sure were pleased. Hands Across the Border (1944) <br/><br/>** (out of 4)<br/><br/>HANDS ACROSS THE BORDER has the reputation of being one of Roy Rogers&#39; worst film but I&#39;m not quite certain I&#39;d go that far. It&#39;s certainly one of the strangest ones I&#39;ve seen and I only viewed the edited TV version, which was missing a few of the musical numbers but more on that in a bit. The &quot;story&quot; has Rogers and Teddy Bear (Guinn &#39;Big Boy&#39; Williams) getting a job on a ranch but when the owner is killed after being thrown from Trigger, Rogers must convince the man&#39;s daughter not to have the horse killed. Yeah, that&#39;s pretty much the entire story to be found in this film. It&#39;s easy to see why so many people might hate this movieit often gets attacked for having way too much music and not enough action or story. In the TV version I watched there were countless musical numbers so it&#39;s pretty amazing that a few are still missing. I&#39;d be lying if I said this was one of the worst Westerns I&#39;ve ever seen because it&#39;s really not close to being that bad. With that said, the entire film is pretty much a waste for a number of reasons. The biggest is certainly the lack of any real story. I&#39;m sure many fans came to this picture at least expecting some sort of action but we really never get any. The story seems to be all over the place because when we&#39;re introduced to Williams he is having people chase him but it never makes much sense why or why when they catch up they believe he&#39;s a different person than who they were chasing. It also doesn&#39;t make sense that the Onslow Stevens character is made to be the bad guy but then this here goes nowhere. The entire story is a real mess but it&#39;s not helped by the fact that the majority of the music numbers aren&#39;t very catchy and just come acrossbland. Rogers is good in his role,usual, but Williams isn&#39;t nearlyeffectivehe usually is and even Stevens appears to be bored. Ruth Terry isn&#39;t too badthe love interest but the screenplay gives her very little to do. HANDS ACROSS THE BORDER will probably disappoint Rogers fans but I think fans of the weird, suchmyself, might get some mild entertainment out of the strangeness.
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