The evening showdown was very good. Jones had something boyish, emotive (or maybe this was just his acting ideal) and playful, unalike his physic, which was manly and impressive. The funny scenes were convincingly so, with ideas from the silent cinema (and the quite rude slapstick at the beginning). This atmospheric and self-referential (the lines about prettiness, spookiness, the dirge) western has a surprising freshness and a sense of the places and the events, despite the clumsiness; Jones looked workmanlike and manly, but here he aims at the silent style of acting (the overacting in the funeral sequence), and he seems emotive when he should of looked made of granite and imposing, but it's a movie, so the result of more than one guy's work, and it also doesn't seem a kids' movie. The storyline (a revenge: a cowman, drifter by vocation, has a friend who settled as the foreman of the titular ranch, and the friend has been killed by a local despot) is about the emotions of the events; so, it has a dramatic plot. Good acting from the bit players: some henchmen, an iron-smith. It begins with cowmen indulging in singing, then Jones' lame and mean pranks.Jones was a _congener of McCoy (Gibson was a bit younger than them).

In his second talking film Buck Jones proved in Shadow Ranch that he had a voice that would serve him well in sound westerns. However one rule of B westerns was violated here.Buck and sidekick Frank Rice split up and go their separate ways when Jones gets a letter from Rice about trouble on a place he's working on called Shadow Ranch. Someone is trying to frighten owner Margaret De La Motte and her aunt Kate Price into selling the place. When Jones arrives he finds his old sidekick shot dead and being buried on Boot Hill.Sidekicks are not killed in B westerns they have to provide comic relief and Rice was funny in his time in Shadow Ranch.Of course Jones finds who's responsible and exacts some justice. Some kudos have to go to shotgun wielding Kate Price who is sidekick to the leading lady. A formidable woman with both Brogue and buckshot.Nice film, but nothing new here.

Best friends and cowpunchers Sim Baldwin (Buck Jones) and Ranny Williams get fired for horsing around at campfire on the range. Ranny, now tired of constant wandering all his life, decides to settle down to a permanent job. He later finds one as foreman at Shadow Ranch, owned by Ruth Cameron. Sim continues his own roaming for a time, and then decides that he wants to hook up with Ranny. As he's riding up to Shadow Ranch he notes a burial in progress, not cognizant that it was Ranny's funeral. Then Sim finds out that a no-good varmint shot Ranny in the back when he was in town. Meanwhile, cattle are being rustled and the ranch help has been intimidated to leave. Sim learns that Dan Blake has been trying to get control of Shadow Ranch. Before long, Sim has taken up the fight for Ruth, so Blake wants him out of town. Sim is not going anywhere. Movie ends nicely with a town gunfight, fistfight, and chase on horseback. Guess who wins?

This is a great early Buck Jones western. It is Buck's second talking movie and was made for Columbia in 1930. It is neatly packaged and represents, in my opinion, one of the very best of the B-Western genre. Buck plays a wandering cowboy whose best friend is an older gent named Ranny Williams. Ranny is played by Frank Rice who turns in a top notch performance, especially when he tells Buck that he is tired of wandering from one outfit to another, and when he reminisces about his old friend right before he goes off to town and is shot in the back.Another great scene is when Buck comes to Shadow Ranch just as the townspeople are burying Ranny. Buck silently rides by the graveside service and removes his hat as he passes by in respect, not knowing it is his old friend they are burying.The rest of the film deals with Buck taking up the fight for his old pal and the female owner of Shadow Ranch.This is a special movie.