Navajo Kid (1945)
Solid Steele Western
24 March 2010
He may be small (5'5"), but Bob Steele is a human dynamo. Catch his acrobatics mounting a horse or his many adroit brawling moves. Then too, that hard-eyed stare is as good as Eastwood's. No doubt about it, he's a high-energy performer, never boring. Here, he's a white man who's learned Indian ways that he's using to track down his real father after baddies killed his adoptive dad. If that sounds complicated—yeah, I had trouble too. But it doesn't matter. There's some hard riding, a good surprising brawl, and even Saylor's comic relief works pretty well.

One reason to watch is a chance to see two classic Western bad guys in action. I. Stanford Jolley is the long-faced cardsharp, familiar from a hundred of these oaters. He's got a lot of lines and screen time here, but goes uncredited in the cast credits. You wonder why. Then there's rotund Charles King, taking time off from his usual gang boss, as a gang henchman with few lines and not much screen time. So why is he credited, but not Jolley! But pity poor Caren Marsh who doesn't show up until the movie's almost over.

Nothing special here, just a good solid Bob Steele programmer.
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