The Gun Ranger

After doing time for a crime he didn't commit, a cowboy tries to find the men who framed him.

The Saturday matinee crowd got two cowboy stars for the price of one in this lavishly budgeted western serial starring former singing cowboy Dick Foran and Buck Jones. The latter contributed deadpan humor to the proceedings, making Jones perhaps the highest paid B-western comedy relief in history. The two heroes defend the Death Valley borax miners from an outlaw gang headed by Wolf Reade. An extraordinarily strong cast -- for a serial, at least -- supported the stars, headed by Charles Bickford as Reade, Leo Carillo, Lon Chaney, Jr., and silent screen star Monte Blue. Leading lady Jeanne Kelly later changed her name to Jean Brooks and starred in the atmospheric RKO thriller The Seventh Victim (1943). Universal claimed to have spent $1 million on this serial and made sure to get their money's worth by endlessly recycling the action footage in serials and B-westerns for years to come.

A cowboy protects a girl from those who murdered her father for his gold mine.

Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.

A former gunfighter, now a circuit court judge, faces his father's killer in a small post-Civil War Kansas town.

A mysterious preacher protects a humble prospector village from a greedy mining company trying to encroach on their land.

Rancher Reynolds has fired his men and hired killers and is now using a crooked land deal to put the other ranchers off their land. Calico finds the reason why when he runs into his old nemesis Porter.

Stodge City is in the grip of the Rumpo Kid and his gang. Mistaken identity again takes a hand as a 'sanitary engineer' named Marshal P. Knutt is mistaken for a law marshal. Being the conscientious sort, Marshal tries to help the town get rid of Rumpo, and a showdown is inevitable. Marshal has two aids—revenge-seeking Annie Oakley and his sanitary expertise.

Marshall Jed Cooper survives a hanging, vowing revenge on the lynch mob that left him dangling. To carry out his oath for vengeance, he returns to his former job as a lawman. Before long, he's caught up with the nine men on his hit list and starts dispensing his own brand of Wild West justice.

A young doctor rejects his older outlaw brother Johnny who put him through medical school by dubious means. The brothers find themselves on opposite sides of a range war between homesteaders and a crooked cattleman.

After killing a man in self defense over a poker game, Wild Bill Elliott turns outlaw in order to escape a lynch mob.

A young mining engineer sets out to catch the killers of both his brother and a beautiful young girl's father.

Gene takes care of three tough kids sent west from Chicago after their father died and left them a cattle ranch. They help him catch a bunch of rustlers.

Billy Carson, looking for rustlers, kills Bradley in a gun fight. Arrested, the judge finds him innocent but jails him anyway. When the rustling resumes he is released and posing as a Mexican cattle buyer he hopes to trap the culprits.

Marshal Tim Donovan has been sent to investigate a series of holdups. Posing as a card sharp he soon believes he knows who is tipping off the outlaws. So he sets up a fake shipment knowing that if the stage is robbed the contact person will be identiifed. But the day the stage is due the Sheriff arrests the gang Tim was expecting to do the robbery.

Outlaw and self-appointed lawmaker Judge Roy Bean rules over an empty stretch of the West that gradually grows, under his iron fist, into a thriving town, while dispensing his his own quirky brand of frontier justice upon strangers passing by.

A beautiful woman with an ulterior motive hires two gunslingers to escort her through Indian territory so she can be reunited with her awaiting husband.

It is now an accepted fact that the best of Johnny Mack Brown's Universal westerns were directed by the talented Joseph H. Lewis. Boss of Hangtown Mesa may not be in the same league as the Brown-Lewis classic Arizona Cyclone, but it comes awfully close. This time around, hero Steve Collins (Brown) comes to the aid of Betty Wilkins (Helen Deverell), who has taken over the telegraph-line business established by her uncle John (Henry Hall). The latter was murdered by outlaws who don't cotton to having the territory linked up electronically with the rest of the world.

U.S. Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie and Sandy Hopkins are working undercover to capture a gang stealing horses from the Navajos, and to capture the killer of a Ranger. Nevada poses as an outlaw to get in with the gang and find the leader, while Sandy pretends to be a drunken old horse thief that has knowledge of where the Navajos have hidden their ponies.

The Mesquiteers capture a horse thief who escapes justice through a crooked judge. They gather signatures urging the governor to investigate but a friend with the petition is murdered. Stony is accused.