Wild Horse Phantom (1944)

Although "Wild Horse Phantom" is not the worst entry in the well-named PRC (actually Producers Releasing Corp., but the initials could well stand for Poverty Row Cra.. Well, let's say Collections) Billy the Kid/Billy Carson series, it earns a pride of place here because it re-uses The Devil Bat from the studio's 1941 Bela Lugosi release with that title. Buster Crabbe and Fuzzy St John spend most of their footage in a spooky mine. Kermit Maynard is the vicious, if forgetful villain. (This movie was once available on an excellent Retromedia DVD, but I don't know if it is still in stock. But it was also available on the "Fugitive of the Plains" DVD! See below). Kermit Maynard turns up again in the slightly better "Fugitive of the Plains" (1943) in which the lovely Maxine Leslie manages to overcome sloppy editing, scads of stock footage, obvious doubles, an incoherent plot, tedious comic relief, inept direction (Sam Newfield) and (in the VCI "Buster Crabbe" DVD) image break-up plus missing footage. This DVD also features our Wild Horse Phantom - not Fuzzy Settles Down as shown on the DVD's cover!

Wild Horse Phantom which incidentally has nothing to do with wild horses opens in what you would think is a modern setting in a prison. Some stock footage from a prison picture is used showing Kermit Maynard and his gang escaping. But it's all part of a plan set up by Buster Crabbe so that Maynard will lead the gang to the loot he stashed from his last job.For some reason some kid is forced to come along even though he's not part of the gang and he's shot when he wants to go back. As he's a friend of Crabbe's sidekick Al St. John that makes it personal.At the same time a skinflint banker is trying to foreclose on ranches in the area. It was his bank that got robbed and the depositors were those said ranchers. They can't pay on their mortgages so he's cleaning up.All the action takes place in an old mine where Maynard stashed the loot and where everybody's looking for it.The inconsistencies of time and place are really bad even for a poverty row PRC release. At the same time the comedy of Al St. John truly redeems this film somewhat. Fuzzy's fight with Bela Lugosi's Devil Bat also a PRC release is hilarious. Might be worth tuning in for that alone.

"Wild Horse Phantom" is the only film in this series of "Billy Carson" westerns that is set in the modern (1940's) West. Or is for a short time only. It opens with PRC stock shots of a prison break, with searchlights, tommy-guns, electric light fixtures in the Warden's office and a getaway car for the five escaping convicts. Once the convicts trade the car for horses, it all back to the 1880-90's West the rest of the series is set in.This one has Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe),following instructions from the Governor, and the Prison Warden (John Elliott) watching over a planned-by-them prison break by a convict, Link Daggett (Kermit Maynard) and his gang members, Kallen (Frank Ellis), Moffett (Frank McCarroll) and Lucas (Bob Cason), and they also force a young convict with only a short time to serve, Tom Hanlon (Robert Meredith), to go along with them. The only reason for the fifth man seems to be just to give Daggett a chance to show how bad he is by shooting him in the back when he rides off to return to prison. But the kid lives long enough to crawl to a cabin and, there, finds Fuzzy Jones (Al St. John), and dies in his arms. Fuzzy, in addition to being Billy's sidekick, is also Hanlon's cousin, and this gives Fuzzy, besides stretching coincidence to the max, a chance to enact a dramatic scene.Anyhow, it seems that Daggett and his gang robbed a bank of $100,000 and were caught and sent to prison, but the money wasn't recovered. This bank also was not a member of the FDIC, and now all the ranchers around Piedpont face eviction and loss of their mortgaged property by the banker whose bank was robbed, and they could have covered these notes and mortgages if this uninsured bank had not been robbed and they all lost their savings and seed-milk-and-egg money in the robbery. And the banker (Hal Price) wants his money or their property.So, the gang is allowed to break prison( via 1940's stock footage) and Billy is going to follow them and recover the stolen money.This 'un has way too much plot. That's what happens when the two writers, George W. Sayre and Milt Raison, share just one billing credit as George Milton. Complications arise when the gang heads for the "Wild Horse" mine, where the loot was hidden in a tunnel wall, and the loot is no longer there. But this mine has lots of tunnels, so Link decides he forgot just which tunnel he hid it in. But it turns out he had the right tunnel, but the rancher who lives around the corner and up the hill, Ed Garnet (Budd Buster), has been poking around the mine and has a finders-keepers attitude regarding the money he found hidden there.Billy and Fuzzy come along, get captured, escape, get captured again, escape again and there is a series of in-and-out of the tunnels Keystone Kop chases, or as close as one can get when there are only two tunnels involved and the camera has to be moved from one side or the other to give the impression of more tunnels. Plus, one of the fake bats-on-a-wire from PRC's "Devil Bat" feature gets a cameo, and Fuzzy gets to play scared-for-laughs some.This one is watched only when the viewer doesn't have a B-western from Republic, Universal, Columbia, Monogram, Victory, Reliable, or Normandy to watch. Viewed in that context, it's okay.

This is a great "B" film. It reminds me of one of the Abbott and Costello films where they encounter horror situations. Al (Fuzzy) St. John provides comic relief as Buster Crabbe plays a dashing Billy Carson complete with one-liners. Worth seeking out.