AllMovie

The Western debut of former opera bass George Houston, The Lone Rider Rides On also inaugurated a new series from struggling small-scale company PRC. Perhaps not an obvious choice for action movie stardom, the heavyset Houston was hired mainly for his voice, and he offered ample proof of his prowess performing the series' signature tune "I'm the Lone Lone Rider", "Roll Along Prairie Wagon", and "Nobody's Fault But My Own", all by house composers Johnny Lange and Lew Porter. The story crafted around all this warbling was the old one about a young boy, the sole survivor of a bandit attack, who grows up to become a lone avenger searching for his family's killers. Tom Cameron (Houston) does indeed locate the guilty party, now a judge (Karl Hackett), but also discovers that one of the judge's henchmen, Curly (Lee Powell), is his own brother Jimmy, presumed to have died in the massacre. With the aid of pretty rancher Sue Brown (Hillary Brooke) and general store manager Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John), "The Lone Rider" kidnaps the judge in order to flush out the entire gang. In the ensuing melee Curly heroically takes a bullet meant for Tom. With the entire gang behind bars, Fuzzy nominates Tom to be the town's new judge, but "The Lone Rider" declines in favor of continuing his lonesome wandering. Although The Lone Rider Rides On in typical PRC fashion skimped on production costs, producer Sigmund Neufeld did surround the new star with an attractive cast that also included former silent screen stars Buffalo Bill, Jr. (aka Jay Wilsey) and Buddy Roosevelt.