An above-average entry in Republic Pictures' long-running "Three Mesqueteers" series, The Trail Blazers is something as unusual as a Christmas western that includes comic sidekick
Rufe Davis' rendition of "Jingle Bells". The Mesqueteers -- who in addition to Davis' Lullaby Joslin also numbered
Robert Livingston as Stony Brooke and
Bob Steele as "Tucson" Smith -- come to the aid of Jim Chapman (Carroll Nye), an engineer assigned to build a telegraph for the army. But a group of powerful local businessmen, headed by crooked newspaper publisher Jeff Bradley (
Weldon Heyburn), do their utmost to sabotage the project. Yet despite the inevitable setbacks, the Mesqueteers, aided by Army Major Kelton (
Tom Chatterton) and his daughter Marcia (
Pauline Moore), make sure that the life-saving telegraph is erected on time. In an effort to duplicate the success of the "Three Mesqueteers" films, small-scale Monogram begun their own trio series in 1943, confusingly entitled "The Trail Blazers," a moniker the studio most likely "stole" from this western. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide