Carmen La Roux Movies

Former silent screen cowboy Tom Tyler and newcomer Lon Chaney, Jr. (still billed, modestly, as Creighton Chaney) square off in this inexpensive oater produced by infamous poverty row regular Sam Katzman. Believed by the sheriff (Charles "Slim" Whitaker) to be the notorious bandit Cheyenne Tommy, Tom Wade (Tyler) is in reality an investigator for the Cattlemen's Protective Association looking into a series of cattle rustlings. Along with his dopey sidekick, Dopey (Jimmy Fox), Wade robs the rustlers of their ill-gotten gains until he is recognized by one of the gang, Girard (Chaney). After a great deal of ridin' and shootin', Tom is assisted in bringing down the gang by lovely Sally Lane (Lucile Browne), another operative working undercover as secretary to the leader of the rustlers (Theodore Lorch). The Katzman stamp of poverty is all over this Victory Pictures production, but it is fun to watch Tyler and Chaney, both of whom would later star as the mummy, Kharis, for Universal in the '40s. Director Robert F. Hill makes his usual Hitchcock-like appearance, this time as a townsman. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Filmed on a microscopic budget, the independently-produced Island Captives is purportedly set in the South Seas (though it looks a lot like Catalina). Hero Tom Willoughby (Eddie Nugent) is one of several seafarers shipwrecked on a remote tropical island. A law unto itself, the island is crawling with murderers, smugglers, forgers and at least one potential rapist. Tom takes it upon himself to shield heroine Helen Carsons (Joan Barclay) and island lass Taino (Carmen LaRoux) from harm. Foremost among the villains is gaunt, bearded Henry Brandon, twixt-and-tween his assignments as Silas Barnaby in Laurel & Hardy's Babes in Toyland and the title character in Drums of Fu Manchu. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his first of thirty-two B-Westerns for producer A.W. Hackel, bantamweight Bob Steele plays Bob Worth, a cowboy seeking employment at Lita Morton's (Gloria Shea) New Mexico ranch. Lita's brother Bud (Nick Stuart) turns him down flat and instead puts the property up for sale. The buyer, Dyer (Walter McGrail), has Bud assassinated on his way to deposit the first payment and Bob, who merely happens to find the body, is accused of the deed by Lita. Wounded by Dyer, Bob finds shelter with Mexican outlaw Gallindo (Don Alvarado) and concocts a plan to trap the killer. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The last of Bob Steele's six Westerns of Poverty Row company Sono Art-World Wide, Son of Oklahoma was directed by the diminutive cowboy's real-life father, Robert North Bradbury, and filmed on locations in the Mojave Desert near Palmdale, CA. Steele, who broke his arm during the making of the film, plays Dan Clayton, a foundling raised by Mexican Manuel Verdugo (Julian Rivero). When Dan was a child, his mother, Mary (Josie Sedgwick), was forced at gunpoint to leave husband and child in favor of nasty Ray Brent (Earl Dwire). Brent returns to the Clayton wagon and shoots Dan's father, John (Robert E. Homans), in cold blood, happily missing the child. Years later, Dan plans to marry Verdugo's pretty daughter, Anita (Carmen Laroux), and take over the Verdugo's gold mine. Determined to locate the Mexican's hidden mine, Brent promises Mary Clayton, now a saloon owner known as "Shotgun" Mary, to locate her missing son. Dan later finds Mary lost in the desert and brings her to the mine. She realizes that the young man is her son, but keeps silent. Brent, meanwhile, frames Dan in a stagecoach robbery, but Mary helps her son escape from the posse. Determined to return to her former life by selling the saloon, Mary discovers that the local sheriff is her long-lost husband, who had only been wounded by Brent. The latter is killed in a climactic shootout with Dan and the Claytons are reunited at last. One of the few genuine cowgirls to star in series Westerns, Josie Sedgwick had retired in 1926 but was persuaded by producer Trem Carr to return for this one film. Having fulfilled their obligation to deliver six Westerns, Carr and Steele left Sono Art-World Wide in favor of Monogram, which Carr had founded in 1931 with W. Ray Johnston. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide