Cactus Kid

After selling a herd of mustangs to a prosperous horse rancher, partners Jack Durant and Jimmie Kane ride to town, where they are heard arguing over how to spend their thousand-dollar payment. "Killer" Plug Perkins and his henchman Cheyenne follow young Kane out of town, knife him in the back, burn his body and make off with the money. Jack is distraught over his partner's disappearance, and in the wake of their earlier quarrel finds himself the prime suspect in the sheriff's investigation.

The career of Jack Perrin, a popular leading man of silent-era Westerns and serials, was slowing down when he made Cactus Kid for shoestring producer B. B. Ray This picture is among the best of his late starring vehicles, thanks to a script that boasts numerous unusual touches. For example, the killer turns out to be a superstitious, harmonica-playing half-breed, and one of the clues to his identity a piece of his battered mouth organ found near the murder site. A climactic, spooky masquerade, also unusual (and very neatly staged), adds to the film's novelty value. Had more Perrin Westerns sported such offbeat touches, his tenure as a horse-opera leading man might well have been extended. - Ed Hulse

• western