User Reviews

Within the first ten minutes the players are well established in their usual rolls. The standard indignant revenge motive is uncorked for our hero's actions (hey, Hollywood still uses it today as the premise for a large sect of it's movies). And we all settle in for expected happy ending.

What's good about this movie is the method of vindication used by our hero. He's not going to catch the bad guys in the act and have justice run its course (all hail good over evil). He's going to arrange events so as to let the villains do themselves in one at a time. *(SPOILER WARNING) With each successive death he wipes their names and chalk likeness off a wall. *(END WARNING)

Dick Foran's voice is very good and he keeps the musical interludes down to a respectable number. The way the story is presented is believable by the viewer. Add this one to your early Western classics, and you won't be sorry.

"Song of the Saddle was the second of twelve "B" westerns from Warner Bros. starring Dick Foran as "The Singing Cowboy". As another reviewer has pointed out, the story is apparently based on the classic revenge story, "The Count of Monte Cristo".

The first part of the story takes place in 1850 where Frank Wilson (Addison Richards) and his son Frank Jr. (George Earnest) are travelling west from Ohio. Young Jen Coburn (Bonita Granville) is travelling with them. They arrive in a town controlled by Phineas Hood (Charles Middleton). Wilson a peddler, sells his goods to Hood for a profit and goes to return to Ohio to re-stock.

The evil Hood dispatches the Bannion brothers, Jake (Eddie Shubert) and Simon (Monte Montague) dressed as Indians, to retrieve the money. in the course of the robbery, Wilson is killed but Frank Jr. escapes.

Fast forward 10 years and Frank Jr. (Foran) returns as "The Singing Cowboy" to avenge his father's death. He finds that Hood and the Bannions are still operating, so he devises a plan to exact his revenge. He also meets up with the adult Jen Coburn (Alma Lloyd) and renews their friendship.

Frank manages to have the Bannions be killed by their own men then he goes after Hood and.................................................................

Foran croons a couple of songs and young Earnest as young Frank Jr. gets to sing one as well. From the blink and you'll miss him dept. , watch for a young Roy Rogers calling a square dance at the barbecue sequence as well as, The Sons of the Pioneers playing in the background.

Really unrelated to the story and totally unnecessary, the opening sequence features a land rush, obviously stock footage, to set up Middleton's murder of a settler in order to take his claim. And Foran doesn't appear until a quarter of the way through the story.

Charles Middleton is best remembered as Ming the Merciless in Universal's three Flash Gordon serials. Bud Osborne (billed as "Bob") appears as rancher Porter.