Cowboy Lucky Randall (Russell Hayden) is hangin' with a gang of singin' cowboys (Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys) when he gets an offer to work as a hired gun and bodyguard for Krag Savin (William Wright) in the frontier town of Pinon City. Savin claims he needs protection from a group of violent squatters living illegally on land outside the town, but Lucky's comic relief sidekick Cannonball (Dub Taylor) thinks the setup sounds suspicious so he follows Lucky. In Pinion City, Savin says that Lafe Parker is stirring up the squatters and needs to be fought, and he sends his men to the Parker ranch to set fire to the land. Lafe goes into town looking for a showdown with Savin but is wounded by Blackie, a Savin henchman. Lucky and Cannonball get the lowdown from Parker and his daughter Ann (Ann Savage). The squatters are actually legitimate homesteaders, but Savin and his men have been rustling cattle and fencing off grazing land in an attempt to claim the land for themselves. Lucky shifts his allegiance to Parker and Ann, deals with an ambush by Savin's thugs (resulting in two of them shot and two of them captured by lasso) and sends a telegram to the state capitol to find out the legal status of the land. Knowing the reply will confirm the free range status of the land, Savin's men rob the mail stagecoach that contains the reply. Lucky, Cannonball and Ann seem to be defeated, but Bob Willis and his gang arrive to help save the day.
At less than an hour (and with at least ten minutes taken up with songs), this B-western zips along quickly. It's nothing special but it's a good example of its genre, the singing cowboy western. It is predictable but there is a certain pleasure in watching the gears turn, as there is with most genre films. Russell Hayden does not cut a particularly strong heroic figure (he could be sturdier and better looking) but he's OK. Ann Savage, who hit B-film femme fatale icon status thanks to a fierce performance in DETOUR, is fairly bland here. You just have to go with flow as far as Bob Willis and company, well known performers of Western swing who released over 100 singles during their career, with a handful hitting #1 on the country charts. They perform five songs here, including "Hubbin' It," which was used as the title for a biography of Willis. I'm not sure what that phrase means; it seems to be a version of "keep on keepin' on' or "humping" in terms of struggling along with a heavy load: "It's your wagon load / Keep right on hubbin' it / Down that lonesome road." The songs don't further the plot, they're just like little distractions. William Wright, a B-actor who was in around 40 movies in the 1940s, is a little wooden as Savin. I very much liked Dub Taylor as Cannonball. He was in hundreds of movies and TV shows, and I think of him as a classic-era M. Emmet Walsh. Takeaway line, in defense of the settlers: "It's the sweat of the little man that makes this country great." Pictured are Hayden and Taylor. [YouTube]