Overlooked Movies -- Return of the Lash

There's no trailer available for Return of the Lash, but the movie's short and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube if you look for it.  That's what I did.

When last we looked in on The Cheyenne Kid, played by Lash LaRue, he was an outlaw.  Even worse, at least for him, he was dead.  A little thing like that,  however, never stopped Hollywood, and the Cheyenne Kid later returned in several movies very much alive as a good guy. He was even a marshal in a few movies, although not in Return of the Lash.  In this one, the Kid and Fuzzy Q. Jones are called on to help their friend Tom Grant because Big Jim Kirby is trying to force them (and all the other ranchers) off their land.  Big Jim knows, as they don't, that the railroad is about to come through, so he wants all the land he can get his hands on.  

Not the most original plot, you might be thinking, but there are some twists.  One is that to get the dough to help the ranchers fight, the Kid catches a bunch of outlaws to get the reward money.  When Fuzzy picks it up from a nearby town, he's attacked by outlaws, falls off his horse, hits his head, and comes up with amnesia.  He doesn't know who attacked him, who he is, or where the money is.  Another twist is that Big Jim is working with . . . no, I can't say.  It's obvious in the movie long before we're told, but you should find out for yourself.

One disappointing thing is that the Kid uses his whip only sparingly and in situations that aren't suspenseful.  On the plus side, our friend Richard Moore's Uncle Bud Osborne shows up as a henchman.  He doesn't drive the stagecoach, which was a surprise, as driving the rigs was his specialty.

Return of the Lash is probably for hardcore B-Western fans only.  You know who you are.

Oh, and by the way, the rumor posted about me and James Reasoner on this website is absolutely true.