Fighting Frontier (1943)

Fighting Frontier has Tim Holt as a young hell raiser who has joined an outlaw band ostensibly headed by Tom London. In reality Tim's an undercover agent looking to discover who London gets his orders from.

The real outlaw leader is one of the more respected citizens of the area and you have a nice array of potential suspects. Still I think you can probably figure out who it is, but not too much before Tim hears London blurt it out in a moment of panic. How they get to that moment of panic is the basis for the plot of Fighting Frontier.

As usual the Tim Holt westerns are nicely paced and well plotted, this one especially so. I would rate it higher but for the presence of Cliff Edwards who was playing Tim's singing sidekick at this point in his career. Try as I might I could not wrap myself around the concept of anyone using Ukelele Ike as an undercover agent. Why the outlaws have him around is beyond me and he'd be dangerous to Holt as well working undercover. Cliff does sing a couple of nice western ballads however.

Fighting Frontier is a pretty good film, but they should have left Cliff Edwards on the right side of the law.