Review of Rustlers' Valley

This is an unusual Hopalong Cassidy film for its era in that Hoppy, rather than the younger Lucky or Johnny, becomes the object of flirtation by the pretty young thing in the film. It's also unusual in that Hoppy, and friends Lucky and Windy decide to stay close to this young woman rather than moseying off into the sunset, after they have taken care of the bad guys. Muriel Evans, as Agnes Randall, certainly was a cute rancher's daughter. At the beginning of the film, she is engaged to lawyer and badman Cal Howard(Lee Cobb), who also wants to marry her to get his hands on the Randall ranch, as part of a package of local ranches for a far off syndicate that wants to turn the region into an irrigation dam and reservoir. However, when Hoppy shows up, she takes an immediate liking to him and his pure white horse, Topper. This makes Howard jealous, and he forbids her to talk to Hoppy any more. Her response was to give him back his ring, thus voiding his plan.(Besides, it's her father, Glen Randall(Morris Ankrum), not she, who owns the ranch. So he would have to be bumped off first). At a party, Agnes mostly wants to dance with Hoppy. This film is also unusual in that Ankrum plays one of the good guys, rather than his usual role as a kingpin of the bad guys. Randall's foreman, Taggart, is also one of the villains. In fact, he later shoots the presumed Hoppy, on Topper, in the distance. It's a hit, but he doesn't bother riding over to check out how the person(presumably Hoppy) is.. Attracted by the nose, Hoppy rides near to check out the disturbance. He finds Agnus on the ground, with a relatively minor arm wound. They switch horses, as Agnes just wanted to try out Topper. Incidentally, Taggart felt obligated to help Howard since, a while back, he got Taggart acquitted on a murder charge........Hoppy is doing some investigating, trying to clear his friend, Lucky, from a charge of Bank robbery and associated murder. At the beginning of the film, Lucky is hightailing it away from a sheriff's posse, for this reason. He comes to a dead end: a high cliff over a lake. After hesitating, he jumps. The posse doesn't see any sign of him, so assumes he died. Survive he did, and somehow remained hidden from the posse. He spends much of the film in hiding, with help from Windy and Hoppy...........Having failed in his bid to acquire the Randall ranch by marrying Agnus, Howard comes up with another scheme: He will get banker Clem Crawford to refuse to extend a load to Randall to buy a herd of pedigree stock. Randall is shocked when he hears this. Howard then plans to rustle these cattle, moving them to Lost Canyon, then claim that Randall moved them there to avoid having them taken by the bank. Somehow, by these moves, Howard figures he can get ownership of the ranch. Taggert, who had quit as foreman of the Randall spread, replaced by Hoppy, takes charge of moving the cattle. During this operation, Howard and Taggert retire to a hideout, where they discuss plans and talk about the bank holdup, which netted Howard $20,000. Unfortunately for them, Hoppy sneaked up to the shack and heard all of this. Then, Hoppy sticks them up. Unfortunately, one of their cowboys comes outside the shack, and sticks Hoppy up in the back. I don't understand why they don't then kill Hoppy, whom they thought they had already killed. Meanwhile, Lucky and Windy are leading a posse to tangle with Howard's rustlers A shootout follows, in which the posse captures the rustlers. Now, they want to get the boss men in the shack. They don't know Hoppy is also in there. They might set fire to the shack and smoke them out. But Lucky has another idea, which I won't divulge. This is the neatest part of the film! As a result, Hoppy grabs his guns back and sticks up the others in the shack, until the posse arrives. We are spared the details of what happens to Howard and Crawford.........See it at YouTube.