6/10
"What's the cash value of a heart of gold?"
6 December 2014
Warning: Spoilers
You know why I go for these old time B Westerns? There's always so much goofy stuff going on that they're fun to watch. This one has so many elements that you wind up scratching your head. For starters, did you notice that when anyone who ever came to Fuzzy's house always went around to the back? I could see why Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) would, as a friend of Fuzzy's he would have been familiar with the layout of his home and would simply follow the routine. But what about anyone else arriving, like McAllister (Steve Darrell) and his bunch? Kind of peculiar if you ask me.

But wait, that's not all. Upon arrival, most everyone who enters comes in via a right side door into what appears to be the kitchen. But in the latter part of the story when the Judge (Karl Hackett) arrives, he knocks on a door that's on the left side of the kitchen. Yet when that door opens, you can clearly see that he's entering from another furnished room, and not from outside! What's up with that?

Well, I know, and you should too, that these flicks were put together on a shoestring to appeal to the youngsters of the day and they really didn't have to make much sense. You can tell by the pratfalls Fuzzy takes at the beginning of the story when Billy nails him with three pails of water right in a row, and Fuzzy mugs it for all he's worth. If you can picture it, the kids in the theater would have gone wild.

Well anyway, this time out Fuzzy's all set to get married to a gal (Patricia Knox) who he wrote to at the Lonesome Hearts Matrimonial Club, and Billy's job is to pull his fat out of the fire before he gets burned real bad. Not only that, but bad guy McAllister has designs on Fuzzy's land and water rights, and frames him for murder using the old 'shoot the henchman and bring the ketchup' trick. Referring to my earlier comments, this would have to be one clueless sheriff (Budd Buster) to miss the gun switcheroo and fail to inspect the corpse for a pulse, but so it goes.

But you know, this flick had something I don't think I've seen before. When Fuzzy made his first jail break, he used a kick to the crotch of the sheriff to make his getaway. That looked like it almost hurt. Come to think of it, Fuzzy was a pretty good fighter when he needed to be. He worked over McAllister early in the picture, and then whooped up on him again to close out the story. Which made it kind of comical then to see Matilda Boggs flatten him with a single punch.

So all in all, it was pretty much Fuzzy St. John's picture even if Buster Crabbe was the nominal star and cowboy hero. Seems like Crabbe was a pretty decent guy to give his partner so much screen time. And to think, Fuzzy wound up still single at the end of the story.
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