The first live-action scene is a theatre, where our host tells us, and the people arriving, that we are going to see a play called, "The Night Rider," starring Johnny Cash. And, there is to be no smoking in the theatre! Since the play stars Johnny Cash, all of us Cash fans are anxious to see Johnny, wondering, since this one was filmed during his "Mean As Hell" years, whether he will play a horrible, villainous character, as in Door To Door Maniac, or a hero? But, it is awhile before we find out!

First we see a bunch of cowboys around a campfire, singing some songs, and, finally, Johnny makes his appearance, seemingly as another villainous Johnny (Door To Door) Cabot type, but he's just joking with the guys, and turns out to be a sympathetic character.

The scene then switches to a saloon, with a sexy "saloon woman," as they said on Gunsmoke, and, Johnny, the Night Rider, a famed gunfighter, is challenged by a green youngster, who he reluctantly has to dispatch, and feeling very guilty about what he had to do, he decides to give up gun slinging.

This leads into Johnny's performing his then current hit single: "Don't Take Your Guns to town, Will." So, that's it. Not all that great a film, but if the show had gone into regular production, would it have really been any worse than all the other TV westerns of the early 1960s?

What kind of plots would the screenwriters devise for a retired gunfighter? Probably more challenges from those who won't let him live in peace. If Johnny had done this as a weekly series (note in the "theatre" sequences, references to "this week's" play), how different would his career have turned out? Would it have caused him to be a "crossover" superstar, breaking out of the Country Western "ghetto" as some called it, and into the mainstream of popular music, years sooner than he did in the late 1960s, or would things still have turned out the same?

If you're not a Johnny Cash fan, you can pass this one up, but if you are a fan of Johnny's, it's a must-see. I think it's good that even though Night Rider never became a TV series, the film could get play as a featurette on the drive-in circuit, and that it is in DVD release today. It's been many years since I found that drive-in movie ad for The Night Rider, surfing microfilm, and wondered what the film was like. It was definitely Worth Waiting For, to find out.