Having lost their jobs as ranchhands in the Dust Bowl due to .... well,
dust, Jeff (Smith Ballew) & Mike (Benny Burt) decide to go to
dustfree Hawaii to plant pineapples. But unfortunately they have suckered
to invest all their savings into a plantation that on closer
inspection turns out to be barren land by one crooked businessman called
M'Tique (Harry Woods). Out of money and job, Jeff & Mike are happy to accept work
at the neighbouring cattlefarm owned by Paula Harington (Evalyn Knapp),
even if she only gives them the lowest of labours. But Paula has problems
of her own, since to fulfill a vital contract she has to ship her cattle
to San Francisco at a set date, & M'Tique is rather keen on preventing
her from doing that ... & to make doubly sure he is bribing Paula's
crooked foreman Regan (George Regas) to help him see to it that the cattle
doesn't reach the boat. It is only when all seems to be lost that Jeff is
finally called into action, & he has the good sense to stampede the
cattle to the direction of the harbour, so in the end they have to be just
hauled out of the water & onto the boat ... & he sees to it that
M'Tique & Regan are arrested too, so in the end he of course gets the
girl. Even it the title & indeed the story might suggest
some exotic locale to give this Western an unusual twist, the Hawaiian
flair is mainly restricted to some indoor scenes & some cowboys
wearing flower garlands, while most of the outdoor scenery looks exavctly
like (& probably was) some prairie location where hundreds of other
Westerns were shot, & the basic plot as such doesn't offer too many
variations on the standard Western fare either ... That's not to say Hawaiian
Buckaroo is a bad movie, it's solid B-Western entertainment if you
like this sort of thing, & at least the scenes of the stampeding
cattleherd & the cattle hauled out of the water & onto the boat
are worthwhile.
|