CRAZY FOX REMEMBERS

Picaresque, jokey adventures with a Lone Ranger/Don Quixote and a Tonto/ Sancho Panza--as Crazy Fox (now old, in 1933) remembers his times back in the 1870s with Jack Knight and stallion Whitey. Like the Lone Ranger, Jack wears a mask all the time, having vowed not to remove it until he's avenged his good name by capturing outlaw John Wesley Hardin. And like Quixote (though a corny comic treatment here), Jack is consistently misled by his own stupidity (he can understand the well-spoken and educated Crazy Fox only if the Indian speaks pidgin). In fact, Jack is so stupid and hapless that his rancher father pays Crazy Fox ($100 monthly) to take the trouble-prone kid far away to Kansas. So Jack winds up chasing outlaw Hardin to Abilene and Deadwood; playing poker with Wild Bill Hickok; teaming up with his hero General Custer; and joining Buffalo Bill's Wild West Circus for 20 years. Last seen alive, aged Jack is shooting a Hollywood silent when a white stallion he's riding carries him over a cliff. ""Who was that masked man?"" the director asks. Some intermittent amusement--but the one-joke premise (the Lone Ranger as hopeless stumblebum) doesn't allow for much variety in the comic goings-on.