Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Not believable - and not meant to be.Prairie outlaw Jesse James (Wendell Corey) visits New York with a bagful of stolen dollars, and overhears a desperate salesman (Bob Hope) trying to sell life-insurance to a bartender. This gives him an idea - why not fake his own death and retire on the proceeds? The Hope character eagerly delivers the loot to his boss, proud of having sold such a huge policy, not realising he has just insured a famous bandit. The boss orders him to go West and guard Jesse at all times, to save a payout that would bankrupt the company.It's really an excuse for another Hope movie in the popular 'Paleface' style, and a vehicle for Rhonda Fleming as Jesse's fiancée, displaying reasonable talent as a singer and comedienne, but mainly just dazzling us with one look from those limpid eyes.The gags are seriously creaky, and there appears to have been some clumsy editing, with lines that don't lead anywhere. But all the expected shootouts, poker-games and bar-room brawls are there to keep the story moving.Hope is his predictable self. Corey is nowhere near sinister enough to be Jesse, and should have swapped roles with the famously lean-mean Jack Lambert, playing only a small part as Jesse's rival in town, spoiling for a fight.But in any case, the show is stolen by an 80-year old unknown (Mary Young) as Jesse's doting mother, and briefly by Gloria Talbot as a young Indian princess.Couple of Missourian in-jokes - Corey, but not Hope, pronouncing it as 'Missoura', and a small boy with glasses giving his name as Harry Truman.For reasons we won't reveal, an all-star cast of film and TV gunslingers, with Bing Crosby roped-in too, make their cameo appearance near the end.

I think the kids might enjoy this more than adults. The situations are amusing -- imagine Bob Hope as Jesse James' bodyguard in Missouri -- but they're kind of slow, a little drawn out, funny in a sitcom way. The punch lines are followed by rather long silences while the audience is supposed to be laughing. The kids might be laughing but the grown-ups, I suspect, are no more than smiling. I'm not a curmudgeon either. I laughed along with my twelve-year-old at some of Hope's earlier Western comedies, like "Fancy Pants." The usual wisecracks are muted. Slightly off kilter. And I didn't notice any playing with the fourth wall, usually a refreshing surprise. Hope is funny enough as his usual quivering coward, but I miss the fast pacing of his 1940s comedies and the easy exchange of barbs between him and Bing Crosby in the Road movies.Maybe I AM an old curmudgeon.

This movie was tied up for years due to royalty rights since 11 cowboy stars of the late '50s appear in cameos helping Bob Hope in the final shootout. Note that Gene Autry and James Garner do not appear in the current product, though they were in the original.Then there is an owl-eyed kid named Harry Truman playing the piano. Bob clubs a gila monster ("The mice sure grow big around here"), then realizes he used a rattlesnake.I've shown this tape to many people, and all agree it's the best Bob Hope movie and one of the funniest movies they've ever seen.

If you don't like bob hope, you might want to pass on this one. It is funny, but it's not as quick as the "Road" movies. Hope plays a life insurance salesman in the old west, who sells a huge policy to Jesse James! Bob is then sent to protect his policy holder and his job. In order to keep jesse safe, Hope risks life and limb by acting and dressing as the real gunslinger would. In his "alias" will Bob steal the trainrobber's girl to boot? Western fans might want to watch the Paleface, or Son of Paleface, before judging Hope on this one though. Basically the same movie made three times. "Alias" does have some cameo appearances from early television and movies i think western fans will find fun. Worth a watch.