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Jimmy (Jimmy Wakely), Denny (Dennis Moore), Lasses (Lee 'Lasses' White)
& their group of musicians (The Red River Valley Boys) are riding the
range when they bump into a dame, Dale (Cay Forrester) who seems to be
desperate to win the (romantic) attention of one Bruce Carter (Hugh Prosser),
with little success ... Not only that, she also loses her wallet. &
Denny, when he wants to return the wallet to her (at an incredibly corny
holyday resort), not only witnesses Dale's partner in crime Trever (George
Eldredge) shooting Bruce dead, but she even accuses Dale to have shot him ...
which leads to Denny being locked up by the hotel's personnel until the sheriff
arrives ... just a good thing Lasses has a trick or 2 up his sleeve &
convinces everyone to be the sheriff to free his pal. But even if Denny's
free again now, he & his friends still have to clear his name, so Denny
& Lasses decide to tail Trevor while it's left to Jimmy to serenade Dale. Denny
& Lasses soon find Trevor, dieing, & also find out he was a federal
agent. Denny, not willing to be charged with yet another murder he didn't
commit, assumes the identity of Trevor, & he & Lasses decide to solve
the case (something about an abandoned mine) in Trevor's place. Jimmy
meanwhile has found out that Dale is a federal agent as well, & she &
Trevor have been working on a case about gold-theft & smuggling together.
& when she & Jimmy meet up with Denny & Lasses, they dig up the
decisive slue ... the Ajax gold-mine. However, to find out how the mine fits in
with the whole case, Denny has to assume yet another identity, that of the dead
Bruce Carter, & mingle with the gang who operate from the mine. Soon it
becomes clear that Carter was the mastermind of a gold smuggling operation
which uses the Ajax mine as a perfect cover-up (nothing is less suspicious than
gold in a gold-mine). At first the gangsters in the mine, led by Manning
(Edmund Cobb) even believe Denny to be Bruce Carter (as none of them has
actually seen Carter), only when Winters (Sam Flint), the other head of the
operation & a personal friend of the late Carter, joins up with them, do
Denny's prospects start to look less & less promising, he's even invited to
his own necktie party. But ultimately, with the help of Dale, our heroic trio
can bring all the gangsters to justice. Of course this is a Western
done on the cheap so one mustn't expect any kind of extravaganza, but on the
bright side, the rather static b-Western formula is enriched here with a rather
interesting (if not wholly original) crime caper plot full of federal agents,
double agents & a few surprising plottwists, which makes this one more
interesting than many other B Westerns of its time. However, too much
singing (even if motivated by the plot) might rather put people off nowadays.
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find Song of the Range at adultvideouniverse.com
