Nate Gatzert Movies

In this western, a U.S. marshal impersonates an outlaw and rides to Texas to find the looters who have been raiding supply shipments. He finds them and infiltrates their gang. He soon finds out that the desperadoes have commandeered a ranch and are holding the rancher and his family prisoner while they await the next shipment. Trouble erupts, but justice prevails as the marshal captures the badguys and frees the frightened family. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Columbia Pictures' year-long effort to turn utility actor Jack Luden into a western star sputtered onward with Stagecoach Days. Luden is okay in the lead, but the story, about a deadly rivalry between two stage lines, is an exercise in tedium. Things pick up tremendously during the final reel, with the good guys pitted against the bad guys in a thrill-packed stagecoach race. Hal Taliaferro and Harry Woods, both regulars in the Luden series, go through their usual villainous paces, while Eleanore Stewart is the heroine. After the Jack Luden series ran its course, Columbia managed to find a more than suitable replacement in the person of "Wild Bill" Elliot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rolling Caravans was one of four Columbia B-westerns designed to make a star out of utility actor Jack Luden. Harry Woods, a fixture of the Luden series, fills the villain role, while Eleanor Stewart is the heroine once more. The story concerns the efforts of a homesteader named Breezy (Luden) to ward off the bad guys, who've determined that there's gold on his property. By the time the heavies have discovered that Breezy's "treasure" consists primarily of topsoil, the hero has settled accounts with his fists and deposited his enemies in the local calaboose. At one point, Jack Luden indulges in a bit of ventriloquism, suggesting that perhaps he would have been better off as a comedy sidekick rather than a leading man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One thing was always certain in Columbia's Jack Luden westerns: the supporting cast would include Hal Taliaferro, or Harry Woods, or both. In Pioneer Trail, Taliaferro is fifth-billed as "Smokey", a non-villainous role for a change. The film's chief heavy is Slim Whittaker, playing the leader of an outlaw gang which has been preying on cattle drives. Captured by Whittaker, hero Luden is offered his freedom in exchange for leading a particularly valuable herd of cattle into the rustlers' hands. Luden turns down the offer, and with the help of "wonder dog" Tuffy he escapes to warn the cattlemen of Whittaker's impending attack. The film ends with a spectacular cattle stampede which looks as though it was lifted from an earlier film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ranger Courage was part of Columbia's short-lived western series starring utility actor Bob Allen. Allen plays the ranger of the title, who demonstrates his courage in solving a string a stagecoach holdups. The robberies are being committed by a renegade band of Indians, or so it seems. It doesn't take long for Allen to ascertain that the crooks are really white outlaws disguised in Native American war paint. Bob Allen is as uncomfortable as ever in the saddle in Ranger Courage; whatever excitement there is in the film is generated by war-horse director Spencer Gordon Bennett. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Inheriting the props, costumes and much of the stock footage from Columbia's previous Ken Maynard series, Bob Allen rides tall in the saddle in Rio Grande Ranger. The villains are a band of outlaws who manage to elude the authorities by high-tailing it across the border to Mexico. Sheriff Bob takes on the baddies by posing as an outlaw and joining the gang. His ruse almost works, but he's forced to blow his cover to save the life of heroine Sandra (Iris Meredith). Will this be one picture in which the guys in the black hats come out on top? In all, Bob Allen appeared in six westerns for Columbia, each incorporating the word "Ranger" in the title. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The opening sequence of this Ken Maynard Western is spectacular: Attempting to save heroine Beth Marion from the ubiquitous runaway horse, the hero makes a death-defying, head-first plunge on horseback into the Kern River far below. The stunt was performed by Maynard's unfairly neglected double, Cliff Lyons, who would marry Marion two years later. As for Maynard himself, the veteran cowboy star didn't do much action-wise in Avenging Waters, spending instead an inordinate amount of time playing his mouth organ and making romantic chit-chat with Marion. The story is the old one about the fencing off of the once free range. Ken and his top hand, Slivers (Wally Wales, aka Hal Taliaferro), are delivering a herd of cattle to rancher Charles Mortimer (John Elliott) when they have a run-in with Marve Slater (Ward Bond). The latter is demanding that Mortimer remove his new fences or else. The "or else" proves to be damming up the river and leaving Mortimer without water for his cattle. Ken takes umbrage to this kind of vigilantism but is overpowered by Slater's henchmen, Hoppy (Tom London) and Jake (Glenn Strange). A rain storm causes the dam to burst and the waters rush toward the shack where Ken is held prisoner. He is saved in the nick of time by his clever palomino, Tarzan, while Slater is left to drown in his own flood. Maynard's legendary ornery temper caused all kinds of delays on this inexpensive Western and the veteran star was getting a bit paunchy to boot. Director Spencer Gordon Bennet was forced to use rear-projection in a scene where Maynard desperately attempts to grab hold of Tarzan, one of the very few instances that this technique was used in a B-Western. The grand finale, the flooding of the valley, was done using a model built to scale and is not bad for this kind of low-budget fare. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Ken Maynard at least tries to keep his characteristic off-the-wall ad-libs to a minimum in Fugitive Sheriff. Hoping to rid a small western community of its corrupt political machine, Maynard runs for sheriff against the bad guys' candidate and wins the election. Dissatisfied with this, the villains contrive to frame Ken on a murder charge. He breaks out of jail (hence the film's title) and tracks down the genuine culprit, pausing ever so briefly to sing a song or two for the benefit of leading lady Beth Marion. Maynard's singing is definitely an acquired taste, but there's no argument that his riding stunts are astonishing. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this western, a cowboy finds himself a mine owner and a daddy simultaneously when a friend dies and wills him his mine and his baby. The outlaws eying the mine try to frame the hero for the death. In one of the film's highlights Tarzan the horse takes care of the infant and even saves its life during a mine explosion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Most of Ken Maynard's westerns were highly distinctive, if not always good. Heroes of the Range is okay but virtually indistinguishable from the horse operas being ground out by every other cowboy star. In this one, the hero poses as a notorious gunslinger, the better to infiltrate a gang of stagecoach outlaws. Among Maynard's tasks is to rescue a kidnapped female express clerk named Joan (June Gale), who is being forced by bandit leader Bull (Harry Woods) to reveal the routes and schedules of upcoming gold shipments. Our hero not only rescues the girl but manages to beat up two of the baddies simultaneously! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ken Maynard's western series for Columbia was a mixed bag indeed, with Western Courage neither the best nor worst of the bunch. Maynard plays Ken Baxter, foreman of a dude ranch who takes it upon himself to "tame" spoiled city gal Gloria Hanley (Geneva Mitchell). Lest this seem presumptuous on Ken's part, it should be noted that our hero has the full approval of Gloria's flustered father (Charles French). Rescuing the girl from a caddish fortune-hunter (Cornelius Keefe), Ken is then obliged to save her from horse-rustling villains. Maynard's tendency to ad-lib his dialogue is kept in check in Western Courage, though he's given a wide berth to indulge his questionable singing skills. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

To say that Smoking Guns is one of Ken Maynard's strangest Westerns is understating the case. The film wastes no time getting started, with Ken Masters (Maynard) in mid-sentence accusing the villain (Harold Goodwin) of murdering Masters' father. Framed for murder himself, our hero is forced to escape to the swamplands of Louisiana, where he is pursued by lawman Dick (Walter Miller). Rescuing Dick from a pack of hungry alligators, Masters is forced to perform an emergency leg amputation, which, combined with a bad case of jungle fever, unfortunately results in the lawman's death. Astonished at the close resemblance between himself and Dick (the two men are actually about as similar as Abbott and Costello!), Masters decides to assume Dick's identity and return to the dead man's hometown. He manages to pull off his masquerade with everyone, even Dick's fiancee Alice (Gloria Shea), thereby giving himself free reign to finally trap the bad guys in a spooky old mansion. Decked out with a serpentine plotline that would do Erich Von Stroheim proud, Smoking Guns doesn't make much sense, but that's part of the fun -- as is the astonishing final shot, wherein the heroine's low-cut blouse threatens to slip from her shoulders as she and the hero ride off together. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide