

After a brief mid-1940s burst of originality, Monogram's Johnny Mack Brown western series settled back into the commonplace with such entries as Flashing Guns. In this outing, Brown tries to save his pal Shelby (Raymond Hatton) from being thrown off his ranch by crooked banker Ainsworth (James E. Logan). To do this, our hero must prove that the banker is in cahoots with the local gambling boss (Douglas Evans).
Banker Mark Ainsworth
6.7Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as Comancheros.
6.5Embezzler, shill, all around confidence man S. Quentin Quale is heading west to find his fortune; he meets the crafty but simple brothers Joseph and Rusty Panello in a train station, where they steal all his money. They're heading west, too, because they've heard you can just pick the gold off the ground. Once there, they befriend an old miner named Dan Wilson whose property, Dead Man's Gulch, has no gold. They loan him their last ten dollars so he can go start life anew, and for collateral, he gives them the deed to the Gulch. Unbeknownst to Wilson, the son of his longtime rival, Terry Turner (who's also in love with his daughter, Eva), has contacted the railroad to arrange for them to build through the land, making the old man rich and hopefully resolving the feud. But the evil Red Baxter, owner of a saloon, tricks the boys out of the deed, and it's up to them - as well as Quale, who naturally finds his way out west anyway - to save the day.
6.1A female hustler is chasing after rich men, but becomes repeatedly mixed up with a suave con man and card shark through a series of misadventures before falling in love with him.
7.1A naive traveler in Laredo gets involved in a poker game between the richest men in the area, jeopardizing all the money he has saved for the purpose of settling with his wife and child in San Antonio.
6.1When the most wanted man in America surfaces in a small Kentucky town, his violent history -- and a blood-thirsty mob seeking vengeance and a king’s ransom -- soon follow. As brothers face off against one another and bullets tear the town to shreds, this lightning-fast gunslinger makes his enemies pay the ultimate price for their greed.
6.5A cattle-vs.-sheepman feud loses Connie Dickason her fiance, but gains her his ranch, which she determines to run alone in opposition to Frank Ivey, "boss" of the valley, whom her father Ben wanted her to marry. She hires recovering alcoholic Dave Nash as foreman and a crew of Ivey's enemies. Ivey fights back with violence and destruction, but Dave is determined to counter him legally... a feeling not shared by his associates. Connie's boast that, as a woman, she doesn't need guns proves justified, but plenty of gunplay results.
6.6A con artist arrives in a mining town controlled by two competing companies. Both companies think he's a famous gunfighter and try to hire him to drive the other out of town.
5.9A rancher, his shady bride and his one-armed brother fight amid carpetbaggers in Texas.
5.9Bank robber Graham Dorsey spends a few hours with beautiful widow Amanda Starbuck, in which time his gang takes part in a disastrous holdup. Learning of his comrades' demise, Dorsey goes on the lam. Believing her short-term lover was killed by the law, Amanda decides to make the most of having had a liaison with the supposedly deceased desperado by writing a book about him. Much to his confusion, the still-living Dorsey watches as his name becomes legendary.
6.6Two black bounty hunters ride into a small town out West in pursuit of an outlaw. They discover that the town has no sheriff, and soon take over that position, much against the will of the mostly white townsfolk.
6.6When Rocklin arrives in a western town he finds that the rancher who hired him as a foreman has been murdered. He is out to solve the murder and thwart the scheming to take the ranch from its rightful owner.
6.9Bret Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them, and needs an additional $3k in order to enter a winner-takes-all poker game beginning in a few days. He joins forces with a woman with a marvelous Southern accent, and the two try and enter the game.
7.8Questions arise when Senator Stoddard attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then a lawyer, when he was roughed up by a crew of outlaws terrorizing the town, led by Liberty Valance. As the territory's safety hung in the balance, Doniphon and Stoddard, two of the only people standing up to him, proved to be very important, but different, foes to Valance.
6.7In 1850s Oregon, a businessman is torn between his love of two very different women and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line.
6.1A gunfighter and a cowboy help a Mexican girl avenge the land-related murder of her parents.
6.1Ross Bodine and Frank Post are cowhands on Walt Buckman's R-Bar-R ranch. Bodine is older and broods a bit about how he will get along when he's too old to cowboy. Post is young and rambunctious and ambitious for a better life than wrangling cows. When one of their fellow cowboys is killed in a corral accident, Post suggests a way into a better life for himself and his friend: robbing a bank. Bodine reluctantly joins in the plan and the two contrive to rob the local bank. They make good their escape initially, but Walt Buckman and his two sons, John and Paul, are incensed at this betrayal by their own trusted employees. John and Paul set out to bring Bodine and Post to justice.
6.3A man and his partner arrive at a small Western town to kill its most powerful man because the former blames him for his wife's death.
6.4Two tough westerners bring home a group of settlers who have spent years as Comanche hostages.
7.3The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy on a mission of 'justice', which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, 'Rooster' Cogburn because he has 'true grit', and a reputation of getting the job done.
8.0An adventurous young gambler searches for the owner of a mysterious fortune.
6.5This Western is a pilot for the series "The Iron Horse," in which a dapper frontier gambler wins a railroad line in a poker game and has his hands full holding it from the clutches of various conniving bad guys.
7.8A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.
0.0Bob Day has been captured by Marlow's gang. When Tim Barton and sidekick Monte come looking for him, Tim is also captured. Escaping, Tim has a plan that will have the outlaws fighting among themselves.
5.9Four undesirables run out of a mining town and become marooned in a deserted mountain cabin during a raging snowstorm.
7.6Legendary marshal Wyatt Earp, now a weary gunfighter, joins his brothers Morgan and Virgil to pursue their collective fortune in the thriving mining town of Tombstone. But Earp is forced to don a badge again and get help from his notorious pal Doc Holliday when a gang of renegade brigands and rustlers begins terrorizing the town.
4.5A group of women contracted a strange fever and a former sheriff is responsible for taking them to the hospital in the nearest town, but in their way they will encounter a gang of murderers. His only hope is a woman whose beauty is matched only by his skill with weapons.
7.2A gambler and a prostitute become thriving business partners in a remote Old West mining town until a large corporation arrives on the scene.
0.0Back Trail is one of the livelier entries in Monogram's Johnny Mack Brown western series. Brown rides into a small town where he becomes embroiled in a blackmail scheme. The town's banker (Ted Adams), a pillar of respectability, once served a jail term. Outlaw leader Pierce Lyden threatens to reveal Adams' secret if the banker doesn't let him know in advance when the gold shipments are going through. Adams tearfully tells Brown the whole story, whereupon Johnny rides shotgun on the next shipment himself. Back Trail was one of the last films directed by workhorse Christy Cabanne, whose career stretched all the way back to the D.W. Griffith days.
5.0Wild Bill Elliot plays gambler Frank Graham, who heads to Kansas in search of his father's murderer. This being 1864, the local military presence is more preoccupied with keeping Southern sympathizers out of the state to worry about Graham's problems. Thus, our hero undertakes the task of exposing the killer himself.
5.7This Western adventure, inspired by Kenny Rogers' hit song, tells how fictional gambler Brady Hawkes, going in search of a young son he never knew he had, teams up with an impetuous young admirer and a shady lady on his journey, which also involves him with an arrogant railroad owner and a gang of villains.
5.9An opportunistic Texas gambler and the exiled Creole daughter of an aristocratic family join forces to achieve justice from the society that has ostracized them.
6.0Charming, blithely amoral devil-may-care rogue Jesse Smith and peaceful, devout straight-arrow Mormon Lester O'Hara are estranged half brothers who are reunited after receiving a sizable inheritance from their deceased mother. The wildly contrasting mismatched duo get into all sorts of trouble while trying to claim said inheritance. Written by Woodyanders
6.1A female hustler is chasing after rich men, but becomes repeatedly mixed up with a suave con man and card shark through a series of misadventures before falling in love with him.
6.7Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as Comancheros.
6.3A tough, womanizing high-stakes gambler known only as Tennessee has an uneasy relationship with Duchess, madam of a thinly-disguised bordello, and no other friends at all. But he's saved from murder by a lonesome cowpoke ('My friends call me Cowpoke'), in town to meet his fiancée Goldie on the steamboat. When she arrives, there's a mysterious undercurrent between Goldie and Tennessee, whose newfound friendship with Cowpoke is destined to be severely tried...
6.3A gambler is thrown out of a western town, but returns when the town is suddenly threatened by a band of marauding Apaches.
5.6Cowboy Ross McEwen arrives in town. He asks the banker for a loan of $2000. When the banker asks about securing a loan that large, McEwen shows him his six-gun collateral. The banker hands over the money in exchange for an I.O.U., signed "Jefferson Davis". McEwen rides out of town and catches a train, but not before being bitten by a rattler. On the train, a nurse, Miss Hollister, tends to his wound. A posse searches the train, but McEwen manages to escape notice. However a mysterious Mexican has taken note of the cowboy, and that loudmouthed brat is still nosing around. Who will be the first to claim the reward for the robber's capture?
5.8After a professional gambler kills a Confederate soldier, he finds a map pinpointing the location in the desert where stolen army gold bullion is buried. He plans to retrieve it, but others are searching for it too.
5.7A beautiful heiress is an excellent poker player. Her comfortable life changes when her father and his fortune die during market crash of the 1800's.