When Gene puts McCleary in the stage at the end of their fight, it appears that McCleary still has a gun in his holster.
It was a common practice for a western film to have a current popular song's title as its own title, but the song almost never related to the theme, content or action of the movie. Here an attempt was made to integrate the terrifying story song 'Ghost Riders in the Sky' into this Gene Autry vehicle.
Being a twenty two year old female, westerns from before my Mom was born aren't what you'd expect me to be watching... but here I am.
This film has one of the coolest transitions in an Autry flick; it's when Old Man Roberts (Tom London) is about to die, and Gene immediately goes into the title song, actually cut short a bit from 'Ghost Riders in the Sky'. There's a lot of poetic imagery and the cinematography is quite good for the sequence.
Great rendition of the title song in the opening scene. The tune did indeed take the country by storm in that long ago year.
This Gene Autry Western, made during the period of his best pictures, is a stunner, not only for the title song which was the biggest tune of 1949, but for the plot, which adds elements of the supernatural seldom seen in a "B-Western." As a matter of fact, a good friend of mine who is like me a fan of the old-time Western movies has said that this one is a "B-plus" -- almost an "A.
I was never a Gene Autry fan, being a Roy Rogers fan from age 5, but of all the Autry movies, I recall this one. Tom London who plays the dying prospector tells Gene that the "Ghost Riders" are coming after him.
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