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A different way of telling a story

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes venture, "Sunset Serenade" (formerly available on a good Mill Creek DVD) co-stars the super-lovely Helen Parrish and features Roy Barcroft as a good guy (for once!). On this occasion, the bad girl is Joan Woodbury and the bad guy, Onslow Stevens. They play a couple of schemers. The movie is less fortunate in the casting of Pat Brady, wildly over-acting a Tim Spencer number, and George Hayes as a glutton for Parrish pies. The Lydecker dam-blast climax is almost certainly stock material, but it's still thrilling stuff. Director Joe Kane handles the rest of the movie with competence and even a smidgin of dexterity.

I was very happy to find that this Roy Rogers film was the original full version. I say this because in the 1950s, the original Rogers films were edited (in some cases HIGHLY and poorly edited) to fit them into TV time slots. While many of the cowboy films at archive.org are trimmed, this copy is not and free to copy.When the film begins, the viewer is at first sympathetic towards Vera. After all, she's lived on this ranch for some time and considers it hers--but now she's learned it's not hers and was willed to some easterner. So, with the help of her even more evil neighbor, they conspire to ruin the ranch and then buy it off the new owner for a pittance. Interestingly, however, the new owner is a baby--and his guardian is determined to make a go of it since she has help from Roy, Gabby and the Sons of the Pioneers.While the plot isn't unfamiliar, it's handled well and the songs are a bit better than average. Overall, a very good installment of the Roy Rogers films. Not the best but better than average. Plus, it's a rare case where you get to hear Gabby sing as well!

Mr. Rodney P. Black is the young new owner of the Bagley Ranch, but it turns out the kid is just a kid, actually a baby under the guardianship of Miss Sylvia Clark (Helen Parrish). If you've seen more than a handful of 'B' Westerns you know the set up from a mile away, because a dastardly villain is right around the corner attempting to swindle the ranch out from under it's rightful owner. In this case, Gregg Jackson (Onslow Stevens) hooks up with the Bagley Ranch caretaker Vera Martin (Joan Woodbury), and they run through all the tricks in the book - a phony five thousand dollar bank note, rustled cattle and a dammed up stream - to prevent Miss Clark from taking possession.Not to worry, Roy, Gabby, Bob Nolan and The Sons of the Pioneers have a half dozen songs in their arsenal to make this a fairly entertaining Western film. I especially liked 'A Cowboy Rocky-Feller' with it's upbeat tempo sung by Roy around the old campfire. Later on, and this is the only time I've ever seen it in over five hundred Westerns, Roy and his boys slide right into a song on the heels of a bar room brawl. It had to do with an Irish gal named O'Shea, and Gabby does his solo part in brogue! Very cool. Pat Brady's around too, and has some fun with 'A No Good Son of a Gun'.For a flick that comes in under an hour, this one's got a lot going on between the shoot-outs, a rock slide and a flood orchestrated by the bad guys when they blow up their own dam (couldn't figure that one out). The Pioneers set a pie trap for Gabby (don't ask), and by the time it's all over, Roy's serenading Miss Clark one more time with 'Gates of the Home Corral'. The little tyke who figured in the main plot didn't have much to do except hang around and get fed his milk bottle every now and then, which wasn't a bad gig when you come right down to it.

Sunset Serenade finds Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers lending a hand to Helen Parrish who is the guardian of an infant who inherits a ranch. Joan Woodbury was the housekeeper in the Gale Sondergaard tradition to the previous owner and she's disappointed that she got left out of the will. Onslow Stevens is a neighbor who had designs on the place and he conspires with Woodbury to get the place by fair means or foul.Roy gets quite a few cowboy ballads to warble and in one sequence after a saloon brawl with Stevens and his chief henchman Roy Barcroft, Gabby Hayes takes the lead as the Sons of the Pioneers accompany him in that delightful western ballad Mavourneen O'Shea. Since Gabby got his start in vaudeville, this was probably something he did back in the day.Rule of thumb, kids watching cowboy matinées can always tell who the bad girl is if she lights up a cigarette. Since Woodbury does it in the first five minutes, we already know all we need.Sunset Serenade has some good action moments in it, especially when Roy and Trigger save cattle buyer Frank M. Thomas from a flash flood. Add to that an avalanche that starts a cattle stampede, you can be sure the kids loved it back in the day.So did a few grownups, I'm sure.