Prairie Rustlers (1945) Poster

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6/10
"Any law against bein' a stranger in this town?"
classicsoncall23 February 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Buster Crabbe does double duty in this B Western flick, portraying his regular character of the series, Billy Carson, as well as outlaw cousin Jim Slade who's out of jail and heading up his old gang again. Crabbe also does something I haven't seen in one of his Westerns before, and that's showing off his physique in a couple of beefcake scenes where he switches clothes with his cousin. You know, when they showed Carson and Slade together in profile, their upper torsos didn't look the same, and that left me a little curious as to whether they used a stand-in for those scenes.

So with Al St. John around as sidekick Fuzzy Jones, you never know what to expect. The gimmick this time, besides his being sworn in as sheriff to replace the one killed by Slade's gang, has to do with a new fangled contraption Fuzzy wins in a raffle. I don't know how he did it, but Fuzzy wheels his way around the saloon on a bicycle without taking anyone out. It was entertaining enough where they brought him back a second time and he did some incredible stunts while riding backwards and on one wheel. I can only imagine what he would have been able to do on a skateboard today.

Sometimes in these character double pictures it tends to get confusing but this time around it's easy enough to keep Carson and his evil cousin in perspective. Maybe not so easy for the players though, as rancher Helen Foster (Evelyn Finley) thinks Carson really IS one of the bad guys. Not to worry, things get sorted out well enough by the time it's over. Besides the doppelganger for Crabbe, Kermit Maynard and I. Stanford Jolley are on hand as additional reliable villains, and you'll have to stick around for Fuzzy's clever ruse to promote Billy Carson to the new sheriff in town.
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5/10
Buster Has To Stop Buster
boblipton19 January 2023
Al St. John is sworn in as sheriff because of his proven ability to not be around when the old sheriff and all the other deputies were killed. Meanwhile, Buster Crabbe's evil identical twin cousin -- all the evil identical brothers and sisters having been killed in earlier movies, I imagine --is rustling cattle and killing Evelyn Finley's father. So it's up to Al and Buster to stop Buster.

Tired old plot aside, there are some bright moments in this PRC western, like St. John doing his bicycle act, and Crabbe showing some fondness for the old coot. It's certainly not very good, but there is enough here to make it a decent time-waster for fans of old B Westerns.
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