Even worse than "Sioux City Sue", however, is Gene's final fling at Republic, "Robin Hood of Texas" (1947). No, our genial Gene isn't Robin Hood. True, there's a bit of robbin' in the movie and four hoods, but no Robin Hood. Instead of an English fairy tale legend, writers John Butler and Earle Snell drew their inspiration from Fred Allen's 1945 remake, "It's in the Bag", based on the famous Russian picture, "The Twelve Chairs" (1933). They probably reasoned that Gene's hayseed audiences were far too simple-minded to appreciate Fred Allen either as a radio or movie entertainer and thus they could easily get away with recycling the chairs. Director Leslie Selander and associate producer Sidney Picker likewise treated Gene's audience with contempt when they cobbled a fake climax, mixing inserts from a previous Autry entry of the real Gene riding the real Champion with a really extensive amount of "new" footage of Gene's double riding Champion's double up hill and down dale in pursuit of a couple of fleeing bank robbers.A good cast (including Lynne Roberts) was wasted in this one, although Adele Mara did what she could to spice up the scenes-even to the point of offending the censor.. True, if you're not expecting much of producer Sidney "Saddle Pals" Picker, you may find this one fairly entertaining. Let's just say that Gene's opinion of Picker was somewhat less. It wasn't Picker he picked to take with him to Gene Autry Productions but Armand Schaefer who'd produced some of his best movies including my number one favorite, "The Yodelin' Kid from Pine Ridge" (1937).

There's a slam-bang finale with-- surprise, surprise-- some good rear-projection. Usually, a matinée production's got the rear-projection going one speed while the horse or buckboard goes another. Not here. Anyhow, Gene and crew start up a dude ranch, even while the cops think they've robbed a bank. Meanwhile, the real baddies show up, except they're even meaner to each other than to Gene. It's a more complex screenplay than usual, playing more like a modern crime drama than an oater. Frankly, too much so for my liking, plus too much time is spent indoors rather than out. Nonetheless, the bad guys really are a convincing lot, while there're two eye-candy girls instead of just one. Holloway does comic relief, but in a less annoying way than usual. On the whole, it's a rather odd Autry oater, his last for Republic. His new studio, Columbia, would provide a big production boost. Good!A "5" on the matinée scale.

With no sidekick to speak of, Gene Autry teams up with the Cass County Boys in a fairly standard oater where they're arrested as accomplices in a bank robbery, but are then let off the hook, presumably to lead the authorities to the rest of their gang. They head off to Serenity, Texas and nearby Hidden Valley, where Cass County member Jerry (Jerry Scoggins) has inherited a ranch along with his sister Virginia (Lynne Roberts). With little money and bills coming due, Gene hits on the idea of turning the spread into the Serenity Rest Ranch, a place where harried city folk can go to find some peace and quiet.What passes for the comedy relief in the picture is handled by Sterling Holloway doing a hypochondriac gimmick. His character Droopy Haynes gets entirely flustered if he's overdue a medication or misses ten o'clock bedtime by more than a minute. For some reason I always liked seeing Holloway in these stories when I was a kid, so catching him in this one today on Encore Westerns was a welcome treat.What's somewhat different about this picture is that once the story focuses on the bad guys, they wind up having a fall out over the hundred grand they robbed to open the picture. Duke Mantel (James Cardwell) robs his partners at gunpoint, and wouldn't you know it, heads for Hidden Valley for his own version of rest and relaxation. When the rest of the outlaws catch up with him, it's curtains for Duke, while the remaining hoods continue to battle it out among themselves.By my count there were only four songs in this Western, unusual for an Autry flick where he often got in as many as nine tunes between himself and his supporting cast. Except for serenading Miss Virginia once, all the rest were done with the Cass County Boys providing backup. The one thing I kept thinking about while watching this one was the name of that villain Duke Mantel. I wondered if it might have been inspired at all by Humphrey Bogart's character in the 1936 film "The Petrified Forest". Bogey was a bank robber in that one, and he went by the name of Duke Mantee.

This Republic Picture has Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys accused of bank robbery. To prove their innocence, Gene and the boys are used as decoys to find the missing money. A dude ranch is renovated and who is among the first to check into the Serenity Ranch; dudes for sure, two rival groups of gangsters with two purposes...to hideout and search for the stolen money. Plenty of action; the usual fisticuffs, horse and car chases plus Gene and the Cass County Boys sing several songs including: "Going Back to Texas" and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down".Where is Texas? This oater is filmed in Chatworth, California. To be exact...where is Robin Hood? Among the list of players: Sterling Holloway, Lynne Roberts, Adele Mara, James Cardwell and Ray Walker.