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Pretty Good

Fantastic!

Absolutely Fantastic

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Although "Wild Horse Phantom" is not the worst entry in the well-named PRC (actually Producers Releasing Corp., but the initials could well stand for Poverty Row Cra.. Well, let's say Collections) Billy the Kid/Billy Carson series, it earns a pride of place here because it re-uses The Devil Bat from the studio's 1941 Bela Lugosi release with that title. Buster Crabbe and Fuzzy St John spend most of their footage in a spooky mine. Kermit Maynard is the vicious, if forgetful villain. (This movie was once available on an excellent Retromedia DVD, but I don't know if it is still in stock. But it was also available on the "Fugitive of the Plains" DVD! See below). Kermit Maynard turns up again in the slightly better "Fugitive of the Plains" (1943) in which the lovely Maxine Leslie manages to overcome sloppy editing, scads of stock footage, obvious doubles, an incoherent plot, tedious comic relief, inept direction (Sam Newfield) and (in the VCI "Buster Crabbe" DVD) image break-up plus missing footage. This DVD also features our Wild Horse Phantom - not Fuzzy Settles Down as shown on the DVD's cover!

Crabbe may get top billing, but the star is goofy St. John. I doubt any comic relief in Westerns gets more screen time than the toothless clown in this oddity. It's like they don't have enough 60-minutes of script, so his antics have to fill the bill. The plot's a standard one-- our hero has to get stolen money before the ruthless banker forecloses on area ranchers. What makes this oater different is that most of the action takes place in a darkened mine tunnel where the money's hidden. The pit's also inhabited by a big flying bat and crazy laughter. Too bad these weren't played up more, which would have really distinguished this bottom row production (PRC). As it stands, Crabbe's broad-shouldered, St. John's fitfully funny, and the 60-minutes mostly amounts to a silly oddity.

Wild Horse Phantom which incidentally has nothing to do with wild horses opens in what you would think is a modern setting in a prison. Some stock footage from a prison picture is used showing Kermit Maynard and his gang escaping. But it's all part of a plan set up by Buster Crabbe so that Maynard will lead the gang to the loot he stashed from his last job.For some reason some kid is forced to come along even though he's not part of the gang and he's shot when he wants to go back. As he's a friend of Crabbe's sidekick Al St. John that makes it personal.At the same time a skinflint banker is trying to foreclose on ranches in the area. It was his bank that got robbed and the depositors were those said ranchers. They can't pay on their mortgages so he's cleaning up.All the action takes place in an old mine where Maynard stashed the loot and where everybody's looking for it.The inconsistencies of time and place are really bad even for a poverty row PRC release. At the same time the comedy of Al St. John truly redeems this film somewhat. Fuzzy's fight with Bela Lugosi's Devil Bat also a PRC release is hilarious. Might be worth tuning in for that alone.

Wild Horse Phantom starts off in modern times with a prison break for Kermit Maynard and his gang of heavies. In one of those strange time warps popular in the forties, they're dropped off by the getaway car into a frontier western setting where the rest of the movie takes place amidst oil lamps and horses.Following the outlaws to a dark mine where the gang's loot is stashed, Billy and Fuzzy encounter a possibly insane cackling miner and other creepy plot devices in their quest to apprehend the escaped convicts and recover the money before the local bank forecloses on the property of the local ranchers from whom the cash had been stolen.One of the best (and best known) of Producers Releasing Corporation's Billy Carson series, this is the only episode set in contemporary times.Aided by better than usual writing and direction, Buster Crabbe and Al St. John are at the top of their game here.The film's highlight has Fuzzy being attacked by the title prop from the P.R.C. produced Bela Lugosi vehicle, The Devil Bat. Fuzzy bites it in the butt!