Douglas Dumbrille played a lot of villains and pompous targets for comics, but in one or two westerns, he got to play a good guy. In THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER, from a Zane Grey story, he's Pecos Bill, who's heading back to his old stomping grounds. He's working under a fake name, because he's wanted for murder.It takes half an hour for the details of this story to come out, and another half hour to settle matters, but he's surprisingly warm and straightforward and competent here. There are also a few people playing roles that will surprise you. Sidney Toler shows up as Dumbrille's amiable and nasty sidekick who turns out to be a cook, and Russel Hayden takes a break from the Hopalong Cassidy franchise.Some good location shooting in the Arizona dessert caps off this Harry Sherman production for Paramount. Doubtless he got to spend more money than a Poverty Row B producer, but it shows on the screen.

It's a truism, more true in Hollywood than anywhere else, that the book is better than the movie.Not, I'm finding frequently, when it comes to Zane Grey books."Mysterious Rider" was the rather generic title of Grey's book that was made as "Mark of the Avenger," also a rather generic title.Again, Maurice Geraghty turned an excellent story into an even better screenplay, with enjoyable dialog moving along the exciting action.Douglas Dumbrille as a cowboy ... I still am having some difficulty fully accepting it, but by gosh he was great! He was as at ease as any long-time cowboy star and thoroughly believable, because he was a star-quality actor, one of the best.Sidney Toler, whom I had seen once recently in a similar best-pal role, still surprised me: He was perfect!He and Dumbrille are just excellent actors, likable and believable in roles that are not what they were or became famous for. Excellent.Russ Hayden is again a good-looking, likable, downright perfect cowboy, a fine actor in parts like this, and who should have become one of the biggest cowboy stars.There are other superb actors, and some familiar cowboy faces, that make this an almost perfect movie, one I watched in a rather poor-quality print at YouTube, but which I would watch again.There might be better prints around, and I hope you find one, but I really hope you get to see this excellent B western, well directed, well photographed motion picture that should leave you as it did me, thoroughly satisfied and ready for more.

I noticed another reviewer gave this one a 10. Let's just say that we do not agree on the merits of this B-movie. My reasons for thinking it's a pretty shabby film is the bizarre casting of characters as well as too many silly B-movie clichés.The film begins with Pecos Bill (Douglass Dumbrille) and his partner (Sidney Toler) going undercover at a ranch. Only later do you learn that it was Pecos Bill's ranch and it had been stolen from him decades ago--and he was back to set things right. Now Bill was not coming to have shootouts and the like--his daughter was raised by the new owner and Bill wanted to proved that this man and his son were nothing but a couple of nogoodnicks. Not surprisingly, by the end, they've set things right and set off in the setting sun.Let's start with the casting. Dumbrille ALWAYS seemed to play well-cultured men--usually baddies. Putting this man with his patrician voice out west just seemed bizarre and ill-cast. Toler is known to most old film buffs as the second Charlie Chan--also hardly the sort you'd see in a western--though he wasn't bad in comic relief. But you really could not readily accept either one for who they were supposed to be.The clichés were many. A few of the sillier ones I'll mention. In one scene, one guy has his gun drawn on the other--but drops his guns so they can duke it out like men. In real life, he would have just shot the guy--no questions asked. Later, when Pecos has his guns on the baddie, he gives the baddie a chance to draw his--again, normal folks would have just blasted him. The dumbest cliché, however, and it was so predictable, was when one of the bad guys turned yellow and TOLD the baddest guy "I'm giving up"--and you KNOW that as soon as he says this the really, really bad guy would kill his sniveling partner! And, finally, like so many westerns, the characters are complete or nearly complete fiction. There never was a real person named Pecos Bill. All in all, while not a terrible film, it isn't a very good one--and a very cheap one to boot.

There is more than adequate financing for this Paramount effort, fourth cinematic interpretation of the Zane Grey novel, second with sound, and producer Harry "Pop" Sherman, creator of the William Boyd starring Hopalong Cassidy series, utilizes the extra funding to mount a generally well-crafted piece, although fiscal considerations cause a change in the film's lead as veteran supporting player Douglass Dumbrille replaces an always bothersome George Bancroft due to the latter's customary excessive salary demands. In this most faithful version to the original, stage nurtured Dumbrille is cast as Pecos Bill, a masked Robin Hood figure of the old west, a cover for his true persona, Ben Wade, who was falsely accused of murder 20 years before. Accompanied by his comical partner Frosty (the future Charlie Chan, Sydney Toler), Ben returns to the crime location to exact retribution, a risky business, but he has come as well to see his grown daughter and is able to assist her to avoid an inappropriate marriage while committing to her true love, a ranch hand played by Russell Hayden. The film moves along crisply under the well detailed direction of reliable Lesley Selander until a flagrant continuity flaw occurs involving Frosty, not recovering, while additionally a viewer will find it difficult to imagine Dumbrille in his vigorous role, despite excellent stunt work and valuable participation by cinematographer Russell Harlan, editor Sherman Rose, and old hand Western players Monte Blue, Earl Dwire and Glenn Strange.