I was VERY surprised when I found this copy of "Sunset in the West" on YouTube. This is because unlike most Roy Rogers films you find, this one is the original length and hasn't been pared down to television time slot length. In addition, I was impressed how nice the color was in the film, as it was filmed in TruColor....a process where you RARELY ever get true full color. Like many of the two-color film processes, it was much cheaper than standard Technicolor but also tended to look very muddy....with most colors being more orangy and greenish than anything else. This is because when the film degrades over time, these colors tend to saturate the print. But here in "Sunset in the West" the colors are nearly normal...with lots of blues, which you rarely find in anything but the most pristine TruColor prints.

When the story begins, the sheriff (Will Wright) is out trying to stop gun runners--with little success. In the next scene, Roy and his men are waiting with cattle for the train. Inexplicably, the train barrels right past and doesn't stop to pick up these cows bound for market. Roy chases the train with his horse....and when he boards, someone punches him and tosses him off!! Clearly, nice folks are NOT running this train! Could they be the gun runners?! What do you think?!?! And, how will Roy and the sheriff address this problem?

Like most of Roy Rogers' later films, he doesn't have a sidekick per se. For some of these duties, Gordon Jones is on hand...and for me, this is a huge deficit in any of these later pictures. Jones wasn't completely terrible...but he wasn't an adequate replacement for the likes of Gabby Hayes or Andy Devine. He seemed less of an asset and more of a blundering idiot! Oh, well....at least this film featured a cute Bloodhound as another one of the 'sidekicks'!

So is it any good? Yes. Despite Jones, the plot is unusual and the story rather exciting and well written. Not a great film....but a very good one. Plus, it has a cute doggy....a plus for me!



By the way, Will Wright is very good in the film. However, I was shocked when I checked and saw he was 56 when he made this movie (my age, by the way). He looked at least 70. I guess folks got older sooner back in the good old days....or, possibly, I look that bad and just don't realize it!

The big news here is that Kino-Lorber has fully restored two late Roy Rogers flicks -- this one and "Trigger Jr.". The latter is the better of the pair, but one thing is clear: when they can find all the elements of a RR film, they're better than I actually remember them being. Unfortunately, the sliced well over fifteen minutes from most RR movies to run them in an hour slot on television in the 1950s. Much footage simply disappeared. A few have been saved, and these two color efforts (TruColor) have been restored to their actual original run times, and the quality of the print is very good (on this one),and excellent on "Trigger Jr/".

The plot here is a little confusing. Some gun runners are sabotaging trains to run their guns...but we never learn who they're running the guns to. This was filmed near Santa Clarita, California...which is also confusing, because they don't tell us how close they are to the ocean until midway through the film and suddenly there's Roy about to be dumped in the ocean. Oh well. There are better RR films, but at least this one is whole and nicely restored (there is some graininess, but this superior than any previous releases of old RR films).

And yay! No Dale Evans (I only say that because as a kid when Dale would sing her song...that's when I'd head for the kitchen and a snack). Here, Roy is supported by Estelita Rodriguez (who was the Mexican wife in Dean Martin's "Rio Bravo"),Penny Edwards (who?),and Gordon Jones (who is a pleasant enough sidekick, but he's no Gabby Hayes or Pat Brady). But the real treat here is the casting of Will Right as the sheriff. Wright is a veteran character actor whom you'll recognize right away.

The film is available of Blu Ray or regular DVD.

Herbert J. Yates splurged for color in this Roy Rogers western where he and Gordon Jones, former deputy sheriffs to Will Wright, are helping out their old boss. The populace of Wright's town is up in arms at his inability to stop train hijackings. The worst part is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason for them.

As Roy investigates it'a a very sophisticated ring of gunrunners that's settled in this Pacific coast town and they have contacts in a lot of places. And Roy's not the only one investigating the gunrunning either.

Romance is provided by Penny Edwards who was one of a few women substituting for Dale Evans as Roy's leading lady while she taking care of their child. And together with Gordon Jones playing the dumber than a post Splinters is Estelita Rodriguez giving out her comic style with a Hispanic touch. She did a number of Roy Rogers westerns but she's best known for playing in Rio Bravo as Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez's wife.

Not the best of his westerns, it's a bit overplotted for a B western, but Roy's fans will be pleased.