Marshal Lash (Lasj La Rue) and his sidekick Fuzzy (Al St John) are on their way to a showdown with outlaw Mantell (Kenne Duncan) when they're both arrested by a couple of deputies (Clarke Stevens, Bud Osborne) as Lash is suspected of being the Frontier Phantom. And even if that suspicion is wrong, it's not entirely unfounded, as the Frontier Phantom is Lash's identical twin and he's presently even posing as him in an effort to lure Mantell, who has a bone to pick with Frontier, out into the open. Lash lets the deputies take him in, as they're taking him to the vicinity of his showdown anyways, and once at the sheriff's (Archie Twitchell) office, he tells the story of his association with the Frontier Phantom - basically the plot of (and accompanied by snippets from) Outlaw County (1949, Ray Taylor) -, at the end of which the sheriff is convinced enough to let him go to his duel - and of course, it ultimately all ends happily ...

Now in general, Ron Ormond's Fuzzy and Lash-westerns weren't exactly high (or even average) budget, but somehow this takes the cake, containing at least as much footage from a by then merely 3 year old film as new material - and the actual action (except for the final shoot-out) is exclusively found in the pre-existing snippets. That all said, one has to hand it to Ormond and company that they made a pretty solid whole out of this. Sure, it's not a masterpiece, heck, not even a great indie B western, but in its naive way it's pretty entertaining, doesn't make any actual missteps, and Fuzzy and Lash once again prove to be a good team. And if you factor in the nostalgia factor, you might find yourself enjoying this more than you ought to.

Sidenote: This is the very last of the Fuzzy and Lash-movies, a series that launched at PRC back in 1947.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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