Trail Guide
Trail Guide
| 15 February 1952 (USA)
Trail Guide Trailers

A cowboy (Tim Holt) and his Mexican-Irish sidekick (Richard Martin) lead a wagon train to an unfriendly place.

Reviews
ada

the leading man is my tpye

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Ploydsge

just watch it!

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Neive Bellamy

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

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Yash Wade

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

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dougdoepke

I love Chito's pick-up line to the wagon train cutie—"You know for a girl, you ain't bad looking". Now what gal could resist an endearment like that. Reviewer Fob's right: it's an average Holt entry. But an average entry's still fun for many of us front-row geezers. The question is what would these oaters do for plot if ranchers and settlers got along. Here, it's shenanigans around cattlemen wanting to drive off late-coming settlers. At the same time, real bad guy Regan (Wilcox) is looking to get rich by exploiting the situation. But guess who's working to put things right, that is, if Tim can keep Chito away from the girls long enough. There's some hard-riding, and some cold-blooded gunplay, but catch the lively barroom brawl where nobody loses his hat. I really don't know how they did it unless the Stetsons were glued on. Except for some opening stock shots, action never leaves greater LA locations, so scenery doesn't count for much. Anyway, it's a good supporting cast with several cuties instead of just one. So it's an entertaining way to pass an easy hour.

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classicsoncall

I always get a kick out of lines in a Western like the one in my summary above, they take me back to the wonderful days of Yosemite Sam in the Warner Brothers cartoons of the era. I can just see Yosemite looking down the barrel of his six-guns while drawing a bead on Elmer Fudd. Actually, the line was delivered by Silver Springs town villain Regan (Frank Wilcox) to young Kenny Masters (Robert Sherwood) on the way out of town, with Regan intending to keep Masters quiet about all the skulduggery the baddies are trying to pull off.For Tim Holt and Chito Rafferty (Richard Martin) this is a pretty standard outing, with all the usual elements present in their relationship. Tim has to keep Chito on the straight and narrow so he doesn't get waylaid by every pretty face he comes across. Trail gal Maria (Wendy Waldron) was pretty persistent in the romance department, so Chito had to be just as nimble to stay a step ahead of her.The story itself presents the age old rivalry between cattle men and homesteaders, with Tim angling for a way both sides can live in harmony with each other. Cattle rancher Peg Masters (Linda Douglas) functions as the go-between once she finds out her brother is done in by the outlaws. Standard horse chase scenes and shoot-outs complement the on screen action, but there's never any doubt the good guys will come out on top.

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bkoganbing

Trail Guide finds Tim Holt and Richard Martin doing just that, guiding a wagon train of homesteaders to new settlements. But when the job is done it's a lot of hostility that the new settlers are finding. Later on wagon master Kenneth MacDonald is shot and robbed of all the homesteaders money and more importantly the deeds to the new farms.It wouldn't be a Tim Holt or any other kind of western if the cowboy heroes didn't stay and take a hand in the fight. Of course there's a nefarious villain with a nefarious reason for wanting to keep the hostility going.Brother and sister ranchers Robert Sherwood and Linda Douglas lead the cattle people's opposition to the new settlers. Wendy Waldron is the girl with marriage on her mind where Chito Rafferty is concerned. That overactive libido working overtime again.Distinctly unfunny and at time downright annoying his Tom London as the oldtimer comic relief.Other than Mr. London, this is a good B western.

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frankfob

Tim Holt turns in a workmanlike job in this run-of-the-mill entry in his long-running series of "B" westerns for RKO. The story about cattlemen vs. homesteaders has been done countless times before, and there's nothing new to be found in the script. The action scenes are OK, the production values are good--as they usually were in this series--and there's a better-than- average supporting cast of veteran western players: John Pickard, Kenneth MacDonald, John Merton, Frank Wilcox. Pretty, but wooden, Linda Douglas is the female interest, and the picture moves along at a satisfactory pace. Tim Holt's westerns were always a bit too cut-and-dried for my tastes and Richard Martin's irritating Chito Rafferty has grated on me from the first time I saw him--the patently phony Mexican "accent" and the "devil-may-care" attitude that he was never able to quite pull off--but on the whole they were better than most of the series westerns at the time, especially the awful Whip Wilson ones from Monogram, and this is no better or no worse than others in Holt's series.

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