Professor Marsh (John Van Pelt) went missing while looking for the lost city of Lukachukai. His daughter Betty Marsh (Mary Russell) discussed with some colleagues putting together an expedition to find him. They are getting supplies together but need a guide. While discussing everything with Rutledge (Roger Williams), the owner of the general store, three men come riding up.
Stony Brooke (Bob Livingston), Tucson Smith (Ray Corrigan) and Lullaby Joslin (Max Terhune) have a man slung over Tucson’s horse. The man is Professor Flaxton (C. Montague Shaw) one of men in the Marsh expedition. The professor is rambling and confused but manages to tell Betty that they found the lost city. When she asks if her father is still alive Flaxton replies that he doesn’t know. He then begins to tell how to get to the lost city. Suddenly the lights go out and Flaxton is stabbed to death by an Indian dagger that is carved with symbols from the lost city.
Betty still wants to try to find her father. The expedition she puts together includes Rutledge and his Indian assistant Otah (Yakima Cannutt) as guides. Also along is Henrietta McCoy (Fern Emmett), Professor Brewster (John Ward), Professor Fronc (George Godfrey), Professor Cleary (Earle Ross) and Coggins (Frank Ellis) the camp cook. The three Mesquiteers Stony, Tucson and Lullaby go along promising the sheriff to keep an eye on everyone.
While they are on the trail Tucson reveals that when he found Professor Flaxton there was a diary near him. In it is a map to the lost city. For safety he rips the map into pieces and gives each member of the party a piece. If they need to refer to the map they can put the pieces together. From then on members of the expedition begin to be either murdered or disappear. Each time someone is killed, their piece of the map is missing. Someone seems to be systematically killing everyone to either get their pieces of the map or prevent anyone from discovering where the lost city is.
“The Riders of the Whistling Skull” was released in 1937 and was directed by Mack V. Wright. It is a western mystery and part of a sub-genre known as weird west. It was based on characters created by William Colt MacDonald.
Although the film is sometimes referred to as a supernatural western it really isn’t. There is lots of action in the film but it’s mostly regular Indian attacks. There are no ghosts or mummies. The rock cropping to the lost city does look like a skull but the noise from it is just wind going through it. The movie is actually decent as a western but there isn’t much weird about it. Even the lost city is still lost. All you see of it is whatever Republic threw together on set.
Republic Pictures did a series of fifty-one “B” westerns between 1936 and 1943 that featured a trio of cowboys known as the Three Mesquiteers. Different actors played the various trios. About eight of them starred John Wayne as Stony Brooke. Ray “Crash” Corrigan did twenty-four as Tucson Smith and Bob Steele did about twenty of them as Tucson Smith. The series was based on a bunch of William Colt MacDonald’s novels. Some of the movies blended traditional western stories with more modern elements. “Riders of the Whistling Skull” was the fourth movie in the series. Republic wasn’t the only film company that made “Three Mesquiteer” films but they were definitely the most prolific.
The name “Three Mesquiteers” was a play on words, referring to mesquite, a plant common in the Western states, and the characters of the 1844 Alexander Dumas novel The Three Musketeers.