Likeable Johnny Mack Brown stars as Jim Waters, who invests in a friend’s ranch only to find that someone seems to be framing the friend for rustling, as other ranchers are losing cattle even as the friend’s herd mysteriously grows. When a murder causes even more chaos and one of the victimized ranchers, Hamp Harvey …
Read the full post →“<em>Bar-Z Bad Men</em> (Republic, 1937)”
It’s another land swindle, this time with refugees from a flood being duped into buying land already condemned to flooding by a planned dam. Can the Three Mesquiteers outwit the scheming Phineas T. Flagg (Kenneth Harlan)? And will Stony’s romance with a settler’s daughter (Julia Thayer) have a happy outcome? Lullaby and Elmer provide some …
Read the full post →“<em>Gunsmoke Ranch</em>(Republic, 1937)”
A movie with a perplexing title, Exiled to Shanghai recounts how a newsreel reporter (Wallace Ford) gets involved with a contest winner (June Travis) and a company pushing television. There’s not a lot of substance here, but some use of real newsreel footage, and the action takes place entirely in the U.S. The leads are …
Read the full post →“<em>Exiled to Shanghai</em> (Republic, 1937)”
My first movie of 2021 was a B western, and my first for 2022 is one as well. John Wayne stars as Captain John Ashley, a veteran of the Civil War who fought in the Union Army and returns to Texas to find a chilly welcome from former friends and neighbors, and even from the …
Read the full post →“<em>The Lonely Trail</em> (Republic, 1936)”
Stony (Robert Livingston) is headed for the altar with new flame Rita (Rita Hayworth) as all three Mesquiteers &mash; Tucson (Ray Corrigan) and Lullaby (Max Terhune) — try to fend off a change in policy that would allow a greedy rancher (J. P. McGowan) to target herds of wild horses. In a familiar plot, the …
Read the full post →“<em>Hit the Saddle</em> (Republic, 1937)”
This Western has some of the appeal of an Egyptological adventure, as the Three Mesquiteers — Stony (Robert Livingston), Tucson (Ray Corrigan), and Lullaby (Max Terhune) — become involved with solving the murder of a scientist who had escaped from a cult that had captured him and a colleague while they were looking for a …
Read the full post →“<em>Riders of the Whistling Skull</em> (Republic, 1937)”
An orphanage faces closure because the local cattlemen’s association, which supports it, is facing bankruptcy, owing to payouts to ranchers whose stock has been rustled. The Three Mesquiteers — Stony Brooke (Robert Livingston), Tucson Smith (Ray Corrigan), and Lullaby Joslin (Max Terhune) — are trustees of the orphanage, and they take steps to keep it …
Read the full post →“<em>Roarin’ Lead</em> (Republic, 1936)”
Max Terhune steps in as Lullaby in this, the second of the long-running series of Three Mesquiteers movies at Republic, and his character is soon joined by ventriloquist’s dummy Elmer, a fixture in Terhune’s performances both in this series and others, whom Lullaby wins in this film by beating a carny at three-card monte. The …
Read the full post →“<em>Ghost-Town Gold</em> (Republic, 1936)”
Lullaby Joslin (Syd Saylor) and his buddies, veterans of the First World War, head west to homestead, but the Canfield brothers want the land for themselves and are intent on thwarting the would-be farmers. It’s up to Syd’s pals Stony Brooke (Robert Livingston) and Tucson Smith (Ray “Crash” Corrigan) to take the part of the …
Read the full post →“<em>The Three Mesquiteers</em> (Republic, 1936)”
Gene Autry’s first starring role in a feature (after the weird and wonderful serial The Phantom Empire for Mascot Pictures) and first picture for Republic (though originally filmed by Mascot) is this musical western. Gene plays a young man who, disowned by his father for opposing the latter’s contentiousness and now performing with a medicine …
Read the full post →“<em>Tumbling Tumbleweeds</em> (Republic, 1935)”
