Powerful

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This the third of the Hopalong Cassidy series finds Hoppy going to the aid fellow rancher Howard Lang. But he's got to catch up with Jimmy Ellison who has a big head start. Ellison's likes Jean Rouverol the rancher's daughter, but she's getting a whirlwind courtship from an elegant English dude Henry Worth who is secretly behind all the rustling going on.Worth proves to be one of the more interesting villains in the whole Cassidy series. He's got some rather high falutin' ideas on good living out in the west and surprisingly for an Englishman he admires Napoleon Bonaparte. His men are even exasperated with his ideas, but he is making them money. That covers a multitude of sins.I swear Hoppy ought to keep Ellison on a leash with a muzzle. That young man is more headstrong and keeps getting into jackpots in every Cassidy film. The guys have more than one reason to leave the Bar 20 to help a friend. Buck Peters's sister Ethel Wales is in for a visit and she has all the cowhands doing her interior and exterior decorating. Facing outlaws is better than living with her and her tasks.Watch and see what I mean.

Of all the B-movie westerns of the 1930's-40's, the Hopalong Cassidy films remain some of the best. They have more action, for those who are looking for that in these flicks (and many of us are) and excitement than some other westerns of that time, and have comparatively high production value and less cheesy story lines.Bar 20 Rides Again is one of the earliest Hopalong Cassidy films, and it shares the strengths and weaknesses of the older films. It is less formulaic than the later movies with a more original story, and, although it is certainly family friendly, Hoppy is edgier and less like "a kiddie show". Although I love the later B-movies and the subsequent television series, I enjoy the slightly edgier stories as well. On the downside, the production value is much higher in some of the later movies and the story, although less formulaic, is pretty disjointed and doesn't seem to flow from scene to scene. As always, however, the locations are beautiful and scenic and capture a true "western" feel that many television shows 30 years later missed with obvious painted backgrounds on studio sets. James Ellison is also mostly terrible as Johnny Nelson, although William Boyd and Gabby Hayes as Windy help to save the day as far as acting goes. The best trio by my reckoning was still Boyd, Hayes, and Russell Hayden as Lucky Jenkins, and the movies with those three were often the better quality Hoppy films. In this movie there are also a couple of other recognizable faces, including Paul Fix who played Micah on The Rifleman.The thing that really made this film memorable to me was the unique villain and some clever dark humor. Hoppy movies often cast the same actors as the same basic villains with a small mustache. Although the villain in this film had a similar motive to those villains, he had a bit more character, a Napolean aficionado who sees himself as a chess master and doesn't even consider fighting when the going gets tough. My family and I also got a kick out of how the demise of certain evil characters was treated by Hoppy and the gang with some nonchalant, deadpan humor.So all in all, Bar 20 Rides Again doesn't have the best production quality or actors and has some pacing issues, but the fun factor and some more unique elements to the story makes up for that. This is a good one.

Cassidy's short films were shown at boy's birthday parties in Brazil in the early fifties. That was before TV . When he came out on TV a couple of years later in the U.S.A. there was a lot of expectation because all newspapers were writing about what a fortune he made by this deal. Unfortunately there was very little you could do in half an hour. More than fifty years have gone by since I was so deceived by that TV episode that I never saw any Cassidy film again. Seeing "Bar 20 rides Again" made me realize how his films were above average "B westerns. There was none of that "Roy and Gene" stuff. Cassidy was 40 years old and this was his third film as Hop- A-Long as he is shown in the final credits. The film has a comic start as an elderly woman arrives to the Bar 20 bossing the cowboys who try to avoid her orders without being indelicate. The bad guy is called Pardue and models himself after Napoleon, giving orders with a chess game on his desk. Hoppie acts like one of the rustlers and even shoots his pal Johnny Nelson to prove he is one of them . The great final scenes show all the cowboys of the Bar 20 riding together in a gigantic showdown with the rustlers. "Bar 20 Rides Again" is not a sequel. Hoppy made a film named "Bar 20" much later in 1943.

Rancher George Perdue is secretly running a band of rustlers under the moniker Nevada, incorporating his obsession with the life and military strategies of Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as chess, in his mad dream of becoming an emperor of the west. When he tries to rustle off the stock of his neighbor, Jim Arnold, the latter writes a letter to Hopalong Cassidy to come, along with Red Connors, to help stop the outlaws. Johnny Nelson also goes to the Arnold ranch, but only to see Arnold's daughter Margaret, but he doesn't realize that Margaret is sweet on Perdue and his civilized manner (brought on more by her school days in Boston). In order to join Nevada's gang and get a better chance to attack the outlaw, Hoppy takes on the disguise and manners of Tex Riley, a card shark. Nevada lets Hoppy/Tex join and gives him his first assignment of killing the man who is responsible for the rift in his relationship with Margaret, Johnny Nelson. Hoppy is forced to shoot Johnny, while he is trying to work with Red, Arnold, and Windy (Hayes in his first appearance as the character) to round up Nevada's gang, while not being discovered for whom he really is. Another great entry in the series, aided immensely by Worth's portrayal of the sinister, yet prim and proper Nevada. A great scene in the film is when he tells Hoppy (as Tex) he can use him, while fondling a chess pawn in his hand. Boyd also plays the Tex role to the hilt, with a foppishness soon to be seen many times in later films. A good climax ends another winning film in the series. Rating, based on B westerns, 8.