No Hopalong Gold Found Here
With Speedy (Britt Wood) having turned gold prospector his old friends Hoppy (William Boyd) and Lucky (Russell Hayden) decide to pay him a visit. After arriving at the nearby town they learn that the stage has been held up several times in recent weeks with the gold from Colby's (Minor Watson) mine being stolen. Hoppy is immediately suspicious as Colby use to be an outlaw before reportedly going straight but he is also suspicious of his business partner as well. When Speedy strikes gold Hoppy decides to use it as bait to draw out the robbers and bring them to justice.
An attractive woman, outlaws, stage coach robbery and a good guy with his sidekicks, "Hidden Gold" is ultimately just a typical western from 1940. It takes a storyline which had been done before and reworked it a little to fit with the hero cowboy Hopalong Cassidy and his sidekick with the real twist on the previous movies being that it is Lucky who ends up falling for pretty Jane Colby rather than Hoppy.
It is actually a disappointing that "Hidden Gold" is such a regular little western as it was often the Hopalong westerns which feature a touch of ingenuity but here there is none and in truth what you get instead is some unsubtle skulduggery from the bad guys. The thing is that whilst I expected more from "Hidden Gold" it is as entertaining as pretty much any other comparable hour long western from the era.
What this all boils down to is that "Hidden Gold" is on par with many a western from the era of hour long westerns but this one isn't anything special with nothing going on it to make it stand out from the crowd.
