3.0 out of 5 stars
The Masquerade Exposed, July 11, 2010
This review is from: Billy The Kid Trapped (1942) (DVD)
Billy The Kid Trapped, 1942 film
The film begins with a menu read by men in jail. Shots outside draw the Sheriff. Someone hands them a key and their guns for their escape. We learn the reason: imposters will impersonate Billy and his friends for robbing a stagecoach! Other robberies and crimes follow. They are wanted for murder as well. They find a man pursued by the three imposters. Fuzzy meets with his double! The Sheriff figures it out. The three go to Mesa City. New shoes for Billy's horse. Stanton has a plan to eliminate the Sheriff of Mason City. Billy and his buddies arrest the shooters. Billy goes into the saloon to find the man who shot at him. There is a fight for action. The saloon owner and the Judge are in cahoots. Stanton provides protection for wanted criminals. There is another stagecoach robbery.
Mistaken identification is not just fiction. There are plots and counterplots. The Sheriff arrests Billy and his friends to save them from an ambush. A new Judge will come to town on the stage. There is a trap for the stagecoach, but the tables are turned. There is another chase to catch Stanton. The evidence will clear Billy and his pals. Until there is another impersonation at the bank!
The story of a saloon owner (or big landowner) who controls the Sheriff, the Judge, and most of the town was a recurrent theme in the classic western. Using a masquerade to incriminate the innocent was a new twist.
From the 1880s to the 1920s "Billy the Kid" was a label for a ruthless killer. Around 1926 Walter Burns, a Chicago newspaperman, wrote a book to show his other side, a "Robin Hood" of the southwest. Since then movies have portrayed "Billy the Kid" either as a misunderstood hero (`Young Guns') or a ruthless villain (`Young Guns II'). Robert M. Utley wrote a biography about William Henry Bonney.
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