Although this is hardly the story of how the Pony Express got started, Iron Mountain Trail which is set in the 1850s California is good action packed western from Republic. It stars the last of Republic's singing cowboys Rex Allen with Slim Pickens as his sidekick. Pickens who went on to a successful career as a character actor, best known as the pilot in Dr. Strangelove, got his first real notice as Allen's sidekick in his westerns.Rex is a postal inspector concerned that mail is not being delivered on time or at all with the clipper ship service from northern California in San Francisco all the way down to San Diego. He's ready to reward the government contract to the winner of a race from San Francisco to San Diego involving two feuding stage line owners and Grant Withers the owner of clipper ships. But when Withers murders one of the two owners and frames the other it becomes a race not for a mail contract, but to save Forrest Taylor's life. Allen and Pickens have to get Roy Barcroft who is the mate on Allen's ship. Withers in a plot gambit stolen from the Warner Brothers classic The Oklahoma Kid where James Cagney's father is hung when a crooked judge is brought in to speed up due process and whisper in lady justice's ear. John Hamilton is the judge and a bit more should have been developed along those lines. There might have been originally, but the running time on this film is only 53 minutes and I suspect a lot got left on Republic's cutting room floor.With that short a running time the emphasis is on action and there's plenty of it. Allen and Pickens nearly get shanghaied in San Diego and Pickens has a good turn as he can't quite shake the Mickey Finn he was fed.This has to rank as one of Allen's better B westerns even with the short running time and holes in the plot. As for the Pony Express, you have to see the film for that.

I must say, "Iron Mountain Trail" is one of the better "B" Westerns coming out of Republic Pictures in the 1950's. It stars a spirited Rex Allen in a tale involving not two, but three competing factions for the rights to a U.S. postal contract between San Francisco and San Diego. The leading contender at the film's opening is the McCall Shipping Lines, using a sea route between the two cities, while the Brockway Stage Line has been feuding with the Sawyer Express Company on land. Allen's character is a government postal inspector, not exactly impartial, who attempts to find a quicker and safer route for the mail to travel.A contest develops between the three companies, with the winner to receive a two hundred thousand dollar contract to deliver the mail. The obligatory bad guy in this piece is Roger McCall (Grant Withers), owner of the McCall Shipping Lines, who first attempts to disrupt his opposition by stampeding a herd of horses needed to make the long distance between cities. Allen and Brockway driver Slim Pickens manage to salvage twenty horses, more than enough to make the run, so McCall gets more deadly. Having the Brockway owner killed and pinning it on Sam Sawyer (Forrest Taylor), McCall positions his captain, Mate Orrin (Roy Barcroft) to win the race.Smelling a rat, Rex Allen gets to work, enlisting the aid of Nancy Sawyer (Nan Leslie), while taking charge of a stagecoach riding the Iron Mountain Trail. With Pickens as his sidekick, the pair are unsuccessful as a bad guy posse herds the stage over a damaged bridge and into the drink. But it gets worse - Nancy's father is railroaded by a quick hanging judge, based on public demand for justice and to avert the threat of a mob.Before it's all over, Rex and Slim (appearing under their own names) uncover a shady operation McCall uses to staff his ship; a crooked bartender slips unsuspecting cowboys a mickey and they wind up hijacked. Allen's too sharp though, and rides to the rescue just in time to prevent an innocent man from hanging and to win the mail contract for the good guys - whew!Rex Allen was one of the few "B" movie cowboys to continue his career in TV. There were Roy, Gene and Hoppy of course, though Allen's character was Dr. Bill Baxter, "Frontier Doctor" for one season in 1958. As a medical practitioner, Allen didn't get to mix it up much with a six gun, and the stories were so laid back as to be almost boring. By contrast, his portrayal in "Iron Mountain Trail" is energetic, complemented by a no nonsense aim and shoot style with his firearm.Virtually all the movie cowboys came co-billed with their horses. Roy Rogers' Trigger is the most well known as "The Smartest Horse in the Movies". By contrast, Allen's mount Koko was nicknamed "The Miracle Horse of the Movies". Unfortunately, he doesn't perform any in this flick, though he's mentioned once by name. On the other hand, Koko plays second fiddle to a sneaker wearing chimp named Marie in this one. Too bad Marie is owned by bad guy Barcroft, though she winds up on the right side of the law by film's end - you can't make a monkey out of justice, even in a "B" Western!