Riders of the Timberline (1941)

NOTES: Locations in the High Sierras. COMMENT: This is the one in which Victor Jory is a Louie de Loop good guy and some splendid stunt work is spoilt by some obvious process screen effects. However, it is beautifully photographed, as usual, by Russell Harlan, and the heroine is quite attractive. OTHER VIEWS: Eleanor Stewart, the girl with the chestnut hair who has the feminine lead with William Boyd in Paramount's latest Hopalong Cassidy action picture, Riders of the Timberline, is sporting a pair of solid silver spurs, the gift of Hoppy himself. The spurs were presented to Miss Stewart because she is the only actress to appear in two Hopalong features. Eleanor recently appeared in Pirates on Horseback, and her work caused so much favorable comment across the country that Producer Harry Sherman decided to break precedent and cast her opposite Bill Boyd a second time. If Miss Stewart receives acclaim for Riders of the Timberline comparable with the plaudits accorded her for the earlier picture, Sherman plans to star her as a Western heroine in a series of her own. Riders of the Timberline, based on the famous Clarence E. Mulford stories, is set in the High Sierras where Hopalong Cassidy and his sidekicks, Brad King and Andy California Clyde, battle a gang of saboteurs who attempt to destroy a lumber company. No punches have been pulled in making the picture the most exciting in the long line of Hopalong Cassidy western thrillers. In one scene more than 300 extras engage in a free-for-all battle that is said to be the biggest fight sequence of its kind ever filmed. Gun fights, fist fights and some fast and furious riding pack Riders of the Timberline with enough action to satisfy any audience. Paramount Publicity.

I had to do a double take when this picture started. My copy of the film has an opening title page that states "Riders of the Timberlane". That just doesn't sound right, and reading one of the trivia posts for the movie describes it as an error on a distributor's release. I tried picturing a timberlane and it just doesn't work.Victor Jory is back in another Hopalong Cassidy flick and this time he's a good guy, but just to stay in fine form as a villain, he's persuaded by his boss Jim Kerrigan (J. Farrell McDonald), to accuse Hoppy (William Boyd) of being a card cheat so that he and partner Johnny (Brad King) can be run out of camp. It's just a ruse to have the boys infiltrate the bad guy outfit run by Preston Yates (Edward Keane). The strategy works for a while, long enough for Hoppy to make the save for Kerrigan and his men operating a logging operation.I have to say, the neatest thing about this story was seeing Hoppy and Johnny ride that timber line in the sky, rocketing along looking like it was going about forty miles an hour! They didn't even look like they were hanging on for dear life until Johnny got winged by a bad guy bullet. That was a pretty cool sequence demonstrating how real loggers must have been able to move those massive trunks they cut down (at a much slower pace of course). I never saw anything like that before.You know it's funny, but for almost every Hopalong Cassidy movie on IMDb, you'll find someone who states it's the best one there is, and someone else that says it's the worst. For me, everyone is about the same in entertainment value as a B Western and this was no exception. Even though I enjoy the heck out of all of them, rating any one of them as more than a '5' or a '6' is pretty much an exaggeration.

I'm surprised that this movie got such high user ratings and reviews. It is as though only Hoppy fans vote here and mindlessly give everything a 7 vote.I thought this was one of the worst Hoppy movies. I enjoy most of them. The story was uninteresting. The supporting cast was mediocre. Victor Jory should have remained as a bad guy; here he looked ridiculous with his silly accent. The singing was corny. Andy Clyde's antics was inane and juvenile. There was some decent camera-work and action.The final action scenes in the film demonstrate without doubt how poor this movie is. Hoppy gets word that the bad guys are on their way to blow up the dam with dynamite. So Hoppy returns to his camp, and with his sidekick Johnny they ride a log through the sky (the timberline of the title) to reach the dam and the bad guys, who shoot a fusillade of bullets at them, merely slightly wounding Johnny. So after miraculously arriving at the dam in the nick of time and unhurt, Hoppy (who happened to spot the bad guy planting dynamite with a lit fuse at the base of the dam near the water) dives off the dam into the water and swims to the lit dynamite. I couldn't believe he could dive that distance into the water with his hat on and swim to the planted dynamite, with his hat still on! Still immune to the fusillade of bullets, he conveniently throws the dynamite quite a distance to the bad guys blowing them up. The final scene in the movie was particularly embarrassing. As Hoppy and his pals are saying goodbye to all assembled, sidekick California says he forgot his hat, and everyone laughs as though it was the funniest thing they ever heard.

I have seen through the satellite so far 38 out of 66 Hopalong Cassidy westerns. This is by far the best one with not only lots of action but Hoppy is not afraid to pitch in with the workers and not wear his customary black outfit. He is seen with a checkered shirt and white cap most of the time. I would recommend this episode to anyone who has not seen a Hoppy movie.