AllMovie

The most interesting aspect of this Fred Thomson western is the supporting cast. Playing the Spanish heroine is a very young Bess Flowers, who, as every film buff knows, became Queen of the Hollywood Dress Extras. (Flowers is the handsome and beautifully coifed, grey-haired dowager seen in nearly every party scene from the 1930s to the 1950s.) Thomson's father is in the film played by veteran stage star Tyrone Power, whose son Tyrone, Jr. would become a leading matinee-idol of the 1930s and 1940s. And then there is the villain Tom Santschi, a tough-looking screen veteran whose terrifically staged brawl (or was it staged?) with William Farnum in The Spoilers (1914) became part of Hollywood lore. Hands Across the Border itself was a pleasant if unremarkable story of a millionaire's son whose infatuation with a beautiful below-the-border belle brings him on a collision course with a gang of drug smugglers. He masquerades as a bandit to infiltrate the gang but is discovered and captured along with the girl and her father (Clarence Geldert). Aided by Silver King the Wonder Horse, Thomson escapes to alert both the U.S. and Mexican armies.