JohnHowardReid
Director: LAMBERT HILLYER. Screenplay: Betty Burbridge. Based on the 1935 novel The Medico Rides by James L. Rubel. Photography: Benjamin Kline. Film editor: Bert Kramer. Songs by Carl Shrum, Billy Hughes. Producer: William Berke.Copyright 30 July 1941 by Columbia Pictures Corp. No recorded New York opening. (In fact no Starrett movies were reviewed in The New York Times after Start Cheering scored a review on 17 March 1938). U.S. release: 30 July 1941. 6 reels. 60 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Frontier doctor clears an Indian youth of a trumped-up murder charge.NOTES: Second of Columbia's three-picture Medico series. The others: The Medico of Painted Springs and Prairie Stranger.COMMENT: Opens most promisingly when it reaches the west after a short prologue (this is the second of the short-lived, and highly unpopular Medico series) with a breathtakingly long take and tracking shot of a buckboard ride through a dust storm. But alas, when a disastrously inept young kid is suddenly introduced, audience interest begins to wane. Mind you, there is still plenty of hard riding and fisticuffs, though the climax itself is most disappointingly resolved when we see the villains simply brought to justice through a montage of newspaper headlines!Fortunately, Cliff Edwards delivers some songs in his inimitable manner, and it's good to see stuntman David Sharpe on-screen, but sad to find Danny Mummert of Columbia's Blondie series so poorly directed.All told, this is a fairly entertaining outing, though only slightly above average by Columbia's second string "B" western standards.
