Sheriff Bill Jones, in the line of duty, kills outlaw Joe Land and adopts his young son, Tim. They come upon a former silver boomtown, reputed to be haunted, whose only inhabitant is Hiram McDuff, a friend of Bill's. Ranch owner Joan Stanley hires Bill and Tim. Her father has been killed by the gang of Wolf Larson. By mistake, McDuff hires the Larson gang on as ranch hands for Joan. They plan to steal the stock while Bill is away. Tim overhears the plot and informs Bill. Bill and Tim use ghost makeup, skeleton sheets (even outfitting their horses with skeleton-looking blankets) and tricks to rout the superstitious gang members...
Reviews
The Vanishing Riders (1935) * 1/2 (out of 4)Sheriff Bill Jones (Bill Cody) has to shoot a man in the line of duty and afterwards noticing that the man's son Tim (Bill Cody, Jr.) is going to be an orphan. The Sheriff agrees to take the boy as his own and soon the two of them are investigating an old haunted mine where bad guy Wolf Larson (Wally Wales) is working.THE VANISHING RIDERS is a pretty bad "C" Western from the days where these type of films were probably being released weekly. This one here manages to have a few interesting moments throughout but there are just way too many bad ones to keep this thing from being better known. As you can tell, this was mainly a film where Cody and his son could share the screen but sadly this here is one of the weakest aspects. The sugar-coated cute scenes are just annoying and come across more laughable than anything else.The actual performances aren't anything too special either with both Cody's coming across rather bland. Wales doesn't make for much of a bad guy either but I will say Bud Buster gets a few funny lines as the sidekick. The one thing that does somewhat work are the horror elements including the various talks about the mine being haunted as well as the ending where we get a lot of characters dresses up as skeletons. Still, THE VANISHING RIDERS doesn't have enough going for it to make it worth viewing.
Oliver Drake has around 217 writing credits (including TV eps), but this one is aimed strictly for the kids – and even they will probably resent its scanty production values and likewise be bored silly. I'll admit that Ethel Jackson is a delight, but her role is small. She made only three movies, alas, but I'll be watching out for her in Six Gun Justice. The other players in this movie are strictly from hunger. Add verbose dialogue, a routine plot, dull direction and minimal production values and we suddenly realize that "vanishing" is indeed the key word in the picture's title. Aside from Miss Jackson, I can't see how adults could relate in any way to this Poverty Row effort with its minimal budget, verbose but totally inconsequential dialogue, contrived yet boring and totally uninteresting and unengaging plot. Available on a mercifully shortened Alpha DVD on a double bill with "Frontier Days".
Although there are some interesting aspects to "The Vanishing Riders", exceptionally low production values doom this to the grade-C level at best. The film stars Bill Cody--and, oddly enough, that is his real name! You'd think his having the same name as Buffalo Bill Cody would have been the result of some studio, but according to IMDb that was his name. And, also interesting is that Cody's son, Bill Junior also stars in the film. However, apart from that there really isn't much to recommend this one. The reason is that it's not even good enough for most B-movies--coming from a tiny film studio and starring a bunch of folks who simply cannot act. The overall product is cheap, dull and uninspiring--with no incidental music nor money spent to make it look anything other than a cut-rate production. By the way, about seven minutes was trimmed from this one, though I doubt is anyone would care.
When Budd Buster (veteran of over 300 TV and movie westerns) says that the villain, Wolf Larsen, is "raising heck!" you can tell this one looks like it was made for children. If not, it must have been put together to follow P.T. Barnum's words of wisdom, "You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public." (Or was it Vince McMahon who said that?) It's in the long line of ghost town / ghost cave / ghost rider cheapies so common in B westerns of the thirties and forties. But even that dignifies the movie too much. Nothing worthwhile here, except to see that the real star of the film, Bill Cody, Jr. (who must have been about 10 years old) can out act his father, Bill Cody, Sr., who is best known for starring in "the worst B movie western ever made." (Let's see if you can fnd it.)The director, Robert Hill, is best known for directing 'Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars' (1938), felt by many to be the weakest of the three 'Flash Gordon' serials (though it features strong work by Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless). In this one we see Hal Taliaferro (Wally Wales) featured prominently as the evil gang leader, but otherwise it's a double F: File and Forget. I generously give it a 2.