There were probably other Three Mesquiteers films where the cowboy trio bucked up against the modern world but I can't think of one right now. This picture had truck and motorcycle chases and the boys seemed right at home whether on horseback or behind the wheel of a big rig. Another novelty for this story was the target of the bad guys, they were hijacking a shipment of raw silk off a cargo train and dispersing the bundles among a handful of trucks to meet at a predetermined location. I don't know how valuable silk would have been in the Old/getting new West, but somebody must have thought this was a good story idea.
For Bob Livingston, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune, this was one of fourteen films in which they portrayed the Mesquiteers together. There were a total of fifty one pictures in the series with a rotating cast including John Wayne at one point. It's the present trio that's best remembered as the Mesquiteers, and if you want to consider a fourth member, Max had a wooden dummy Elmer that only made a brief cameo appearance in this one with minimal lines.
The one character to keep your eye on in this picture isn't even one of the good guys OR the bad guys. Hawkshaw is a German Shephered owned by a young boy named Timmy (Sammy McKim), and if you watch closely, you'll see him do a chameleon routine at various points. It's most evident when Hawkshaw jumps onto a truck he's been chasing, and his standard Shepherd coloration changes from a dark colored saddle back to an overall monotone tan color. You'll probably think you're seeing things, and it made me ask why they couldn't get a couple of dogs with basically the same color pattern to shoot different scenes. I wonder if audiences of the Thirties noticed stuff like that.
Anyway, this is a fairly lively Mesquiteers flick that has the boys pegged as part of an outlaw gang before they have a chance to set the record straight. I had to chuckle when the trio ditched their truck to head on over to that great Western cosmopolitan metropolis of three thousand conveniently named - Cosmopolis!
For Bob Livingston, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune, this was one of fourteen films in which they portrayed the Mesquiteers together. There were a total of fifty one pictures in the series with a rotating cast including John Wayne at one point. It's the present trio that's best remembered as the Mesquiteers, and if you want to consider a fourth member, Max had a wooden dummy Elmer that only made a brief cameo appearance in this one with minimal lines.
The one character to keep your eye on in this picture isn't even one of the good guys OR the bad guys. Hawkshaw is a German Shephered owned by a young boy named Timmy (Sammy McKim), and if you watch closely, you'll see him do a chameleon routine at various points. It's most evident when Hawkshaw jumps onto a truck he's been chasing, and his standard Shepherd coloration changes from a dark colored saddle back to an overall monotone tan color. You'll probably think you're seeing things, and it made me ask why they couldn't get a couple of dogs with basically the same color pattern to shoot different scenes. I wonder if audiences of the Thirties noticed stuff like that.
Anyway, this is a fairly lively Mesquiteers flick that has the boys pegged as part of an outlaw gang before they have a chance to set the record straight. I had to chuckle when the trio ditched their truck to head on over to that great Western cosmopolitan metropolis of three thousand conveniently named - Cosmopolis!