A Major Disappointment

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

A common gambit in Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) movies seems to be Hoppy getting shot out of his saddle during a bad guy ambush. I just saw it in the last Hoppy movie I watched, "Border Vigilantes", and it happens in this one too. Usually Hoppy fakes getting hit like he did here because he just gets up, brushes himself off and is good as new. Comes in handy for chasing down the bad guys but the gimmick gets worn out after a while.This story involves a counterfeiting ring printing both American and Mexican fake money, so Hoppy rides into the town of Silver City with his pals Lucky (Rand Brooks) and California (Andy Clyde) to try and locate the hoodlum gang involved. An element in the story involves a comet trailing star that's sketched on a note sent to Cassidy by the informer, so one needs to keep an eye out for that connection.There's an odd scene in the story where a henchman named Longhorn (Francis McDonald) trails Hoppy and his guys out of town preparing for yet another ambush, and catches the trio sleeping on the trail. As the outlaws stampede a nearby cattle drive into the camp, somehow Hoppy, Lucky and California are watching from behind some cover. It seemed weird because there was no explanation of how they just suddenly woke up to witness the stampede.I was also taken aback by an unusual tactic that Lucky and California used to avoid getting run out of town, along with Nora Murray (Elaine Riley), who arrived in Silver City to lay claim to her father's Silver Bell mine - they bought the local lunch room from a Chinese cook (Lee Tung Foo)! It seemed like a pretty good deal for Wong, who pocketed a hundred forty six dollars (and fifty cents), and then turned around and hired himself as the cook!!! How can you beat that? Well, not to get distracted, Hoppy and his pals locate the Silver Bell mine, it's original owner John Murray (Herbert Rawlinson), and shut down the counterfeit operation in pretty short order. All of which led me to think about the menu options at the new Comet Lunch Room, which had chop suey for a quarter, steak and spuds for forty five cents, Chinese chicken for sixty cents, ham and eggs for forty cents, hot cakes for fifteen cents, and FREE coffee with any meal! Not a bad deal, but how were Lucky and California ever going to make a profit with those prices? Especially when they rode out of town with Hoppy at the end of the story!

Before I submitted my rating, the average for all previous ratings was a respectable 7.1. Unfortunately, only two raters had submitted reviews, and both found Strange Gamble disappointing. My guess is that both are connoisseurs of splendidly stage fist-fights and shoot-outs. In Strange Gamble the slugging and shooting punctuate but do not dominate any scenes. This movie unfolds like a mystery. Only in the last few minutes do we know exactly where everyone stands. Hoppy maintains his appearance as a rancher, but is actually working for the government to find the source of high-quality counterfeit money. Meanwhile from the east comes a young woman, her sister, and brother-in-law trying to find a silver mine. Sorting out the good guys from the bad should keep one interested. And the heroine, the reliable Elaine Riley in her fifth Hoppy movie, has an important part in the story as well as good looks.

In the last Hopalong Cassidy feature film Hoppy is working as a special agent for the Treasury tracing counterfeit money spreading throughout the west. A blind tip from an anonymous letter led Bill Boyd, Rand Brooks, and Andy Clyde to an almost deserted town called Silver City and the town boss played by James Craven.The film is a disappointment to Hoppy fans. It has a strange gambit in the plot in that Hoppy is a rather well known and legendary figure of the old west as 65 previous films have shown. This would have the viewer believe that the villain believes Hoppy's story about cutting in on Craven's action. No way in the world would that fly. So on a sad note the Hopalong Cassidy series ends.

There were 66 films from 1935-1948, all starring William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy. "Strange Gamble," released in October 1948 was the very last Hoppy FILM made.Boyd also made some 52 half-hour Hoppy TV episodes between 1952 and 1954. Forty of these were fresh (original) shows co-starring Edgar Buchanan as Red Connors. The others were condensed/edited movies converted into half-hour TV episodes, usually with Boyd narrating parts to aid the editing and condensing. "Strange Gamble" happens to be one of the films which was turned into a half-hour episode; it is episode 3 of TV season 1.I've seen both the TV episode and the feature film, both by the same name "Strange Gamble." Maybe I am too influenced by the TV episode, but the movie seems like cheap, formula TV. That's my review. Nothing positive to say.