The way dead bodies pile up in this story, you'd think it was a Charlie Chan mystery. But no, it's a Hopalong Cassidy Western, with an unusual opening scene in which Hoppy (William Boyd), California Carlson (Andy Clyde) and Lucky Jenkins (Rand Brooks) all appear in suit and tie! The occasion - Lucky's getting married! Any other time we'd see Lucky trying to romance some pretty young lady but this time out, the courtship is moot and he's all set to tie the knot!
Well, not so fast. Arriving at the Last Chance Inn where the wedding is scheduled to take place, Lucky's fiancé Mary (Mary Ware) is distressed over her uncle who's wound up missing. This gets Hoppy's antenna up for trouble, and it's only a matter of time before a handful of suspicious characters arrive on scene. Before long, Hoppy discovers the body of the dead uncle in the gold mine he was prospecting. It turns out that both the uncle's will and gold mine are at stake, and before long, a friend of Hoppy and a sheriff who arrives to investigate wind up dead as well, all having spent the night in the deceased uncle's hotel room.
Just as in the old Charlie Chan flicks, the murderer seems to come out of nowhere, as some of the other characters in the story seem more likely to have done in the former mine owner. Particularly suspicious was Inn owner Jeff Potter (John Parrish), who at any minute one expects he might get right up out of his wheel chair to prove his guilt. What's really rather novel is the method that the real killer used to dispatch his victims; the bed in the hotel room in which all the victims stayed was rigged with a heavy retracting canopy that came down to suffocate them!
Well I already gave a nod to the Charlie Chan franchise, but something Cassidy said at the dinner table reminded me of another era sleuth. Having figured out who the murderer was, and with the guilty party on hand, Hoppy says "The killer is right in this room". That's the same thing Nick Charles said in "The Thin Man" as he was about to solve his very first case. Only thing is, he added, 'you may now serve the fish'!
Well, not so fast. Arriving at the Last Chance Inn where the wedding is scheduled to take place, Lucky's fiancé Mary (Mary Ware) is distressed over her uncle who's wound up missing. This gets Hoppy's antenna up for trouble, and it's only a matter of time before a handful of suspicious characters arrive on scene. Before long, Hoppy discovers the body of the dead uncle in the gold mine he was prospecting. It turns out that both the uncle's will and gold mine are at stake, and before long, a friend of Hoppy and a sheriff who arrives to investigate wind up dead as well, all having spent the night in the deceased uncle's hotel room.
Just as in the old Charlie Chan flicks, the murderer seems to come out of nowhere, as some of the other characters in the story seem more likely to have done in the former mine owner. Particularly suspicious was Inn owner Jeff Potter (John Parrish), who at any minute one expects he might get right up out of his wheel chair to prove his guilt. What's really rather novel is the method that the real killer used to dispatch his victims; the bed in the hotel room in which all the victims stayed was rigged with a heavy retracting canopy that came down to suffocate them!
Well I already gave a nod to the Charlie Chan franchise, but something Cassidy said at the dinner table reminded me of another era sleuth. Having figured out who the murderer was, and with the guilty party on hand, Hoppy says "The killer is right in this room". That's the same thing Nick Charles said in "The Thin Man" as he was about to solve his very first case. Only thing is, he added, 'you may now serve the fish'!