Best movies like Desert Bandit

A trio of unemployed silent film actors are mistaken for real heroes by a small Mexican village in search of someone to stop a malevolent bandit.

Despite his unprepossessing screen personality, singing cowboy Jimmy Wakely was starred in a series of Monogram westerns, one of which was West of the Alamo. Wakely and comedy sidekick Lee "Lasses" White play a pair of government agents who work undercover to solve a series of baffling crimes. It comes to no one's surprise that the criminal mastermind is the town's leading citizen, in this case banker Clay Bradford (Jack Ingram). As was typical in the Wakely westerns, West of the Alamo is approximately 25 percent action and 75 percent musical. Among the guest warblers this time out is the Arthur Smith Trio, headed by a gospel singer who'd later emcee a popular religious TV talk show.

Capt. James Stewart pursues the bandit "The Kinkajou" over the Mexican border and falls in love with Rita. He suspects, that her brother is the bandit.

Summarily accused of murder, drifters Duke (Foran), Pancho (Carrillo) and Andy (Devine) are tossed into the hoosegow, only to be released when their alibi checks out. Far from offended by his ill treatment, Duke agrees to take the job of sheriff, retaining Pancho and Andy as his deputies. The gruesome threesome then sets about to solve a series of mysterious Wells Fargo robberies

Posing as a hangman, Mace Bishop arrives in town with the intention of freeing a gang of outlaws, including his brother, from the gallows. Mace urges his younger brother to give up crime. The sheriff chases the brothers to Mexico. They join forces, however, against a group of Mexican bandits.

Texas 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.

Three Indians were brutally murdered by a gang of hooded outlaws. Each one possessed a silver medallion, which were sections cut off from a large silver plaque which served as a treasure map to a secret location where a large amount of gold is reputedly stashed. Two more medallions are unaccounted for, and the The Lone Ranger and his friend Tonto must use all their resources to intercept the gang, prevent further carnage and save the owners of the medallions.

Ten years after the Civil War has ended, the Governor of Texas asks Leander McNelly to form a company of Rangers to help uphold the law along the Mexican border. With a few veterans of the war, most of the recruits are young men who have little or no experience with guns or policing crime.

Audie Murphy is again the kid who puts on a badge to catch the bad guy, skillfully played by Barry Sullivan. On the way back to town the two develop a curiously close relationship - Sullivan passes up several chances to get away - but in the end Sullivan "asks for it" and Murphy obliges.

Donald Barry, not yet Donald "Red" Barry, heads the cast of the Republic western Ghost Valley Raiders. A federal marshal, Barry is assigned to put an end to the activities of a stagecoach-robbery gang. That's why he spends most of the film pretending to be an outlaw himself. Stunt specialist Yakima Canutt plays a secondary villain, and also doubles for Barry in the dicier action scenes.

Terrorized citizens send for a Texas lawman to rid their town of bandits.

Two down-on-their-luck former outlaws volunteer to be Texas Rangers and find themselves assigned to bring in an old friend, now a notorious outlaw.

A lawyer by training, Bob Millburne (Don "Red" Barry) believes in relying on the legal system to exact justice. But he can no longer sate his thirst for vengeance, fueled by the death of his parents at the hands of a bloodthirsty mine jumper. Frustrated and fed up, Bob decides it's time to dust off his guns and holsters.

In this western, the Three Mesquiteers team up with a Texas Ranger to round up the outlaws who forced the ranger's younger brother into becoming a criminal.

Tom King Jr. seeks to discover who murdered his father, a Texas Ranger; the trail leads to a network of Axis spies.

A stagecoach is attacked by a group of outlaws who make off with a pile of money. Unfortunately for Mexican Juan, the sheriff believes he's one of the criminals and has him locked up. But the beautiful Cheel thinks Juan is innocent, and offers to help him escape. Overhearing their plan, the real mastermind behind the heist forces Juan to act as the runner for the money.

A marshal searches for stagecoach robbers.

Miraculously escaping a painful demise in the gallows, a notorious outlaw cons a crooked judge, an attractive saloon girl, and an old partner into carrying out the heist of a lifetime. As the plan gets underway, a small town sheriff makes it his personal mission to capture the outlaw and ensure that justice is served.

A western town is being overrun and ruled by a gang of outlaws led by Bart (John Merton). Former Ranger Tim (Tim McCoy) is called out of retirement and assigned to clean up the gang. He disguises himself as a Mexican bandit, joins the gang and works from within.

A lawman goes undercover in order to capture the outlaws who murdered his wife.

John Malvin , prospecting the Montana territory during the gold rush, sees bandits kill a miner and his son. He eludes the outlaws by hiding near a stagecoach relay station run by "Possum" Enoch and his daughter Clair, with whom John Falls in love with. Sheriff Henry Plummer, secret head of the outlaws, learns John witnessed the killings and sends him as his deputy on a dangerous mission with a planned ambush.

A young woman visiting in Mexico is kidnapped by a gang of bandits, who drag her through the rugged wilderness to their hideout. She manages to leave word for her friend Bill, who knows the country well. But when Bill cannot find a horse, his only available form of transportation is his roadster. Nevertheless, he is determined to come to her rescue, even though it means trying to drive the car across miles of rocky, broken terrain.

A cowboy arrives in a small town and winds up trying to help a local rancher stop a gang of cattle thieves while romancing a pretty young girl.

Two Texas Rangers have their worlds rocked by a wrongfully accused female bandit.

Barr Messenger escapes to Mexico after a frame-up. He is in love with Betty Brownlee, who disappears after $10,000 is stolen from the firm she works for. It is thought she took the money. In Mexico, In Mexico, Barr finds Betty working in a saloon for "Red" McGee, the chief henchman of "Bull" Keeler's (the Kingfish) Kingfisher gang.

Danny, a greenhorn from New York comes to the Mexican border in search for his older brother whom he has always looked up to. A Texas Ranger charged with bringing in, El Tigre and his gang of bandits, takes Danny under his wing.

Bolton's men blow up the wagon carrying the mine payroll and Marshal Crash Corrigan is supposedly killed in the explosion. A man finds his badge and gives it to Bolton. Thinking Crash dead, Bolton gives the badge away and it ends up with the Sheriff. Crash is OK and the Range Busters know Bolton is the head of the gang but that he gets his orders from someone else and that is the man they want.

Rancher Clay Travers finds and brings in the body of ranger Frank Mattison, murdered on the road to Trail City, where he had been sent to deal with an outbreak of cattle rustling. Businessman Art Kenyon, who has hired gunman Ed Martin to impersonate Mattison to further his rustling schemes, quickly changes Martin's story and has Travers framed for the ranger's murder. Managing to escape, Travers must come up with proof to clear his name and bring the true killers to justice.

When three Texas Rangers try to investigate kidnapped Mexicans being used as forced labor in the mines of Silver Bullet, they are framed for murder by the town's corrupt sheriff.

Singing cowboy Tex Ritter and his sidekick, Slim Andrews, star in this musical Western about a couple of Texas Rangers who defend the citizens of a small territory from power-hungry outlaws. Villain Bradley Craven (Forrest Taylor) is determined to stop the election process that would allow the region to join the Union. Tex and Slim join a rancher and his daughter to stop Craven, with fearless Tex going undercover to ensure that justice is served.

B-western starring Eddie Dean as a singing lawman who comes to the aid of a pretty rancher (June Carlson) who's been targeted for murder by a notorious bandit known as "The Hawk".

The Rancho Grande, a Texas border ranch, cut off from the law by a gang of outlaws led by ranch foreman Bart Lane, who is holding the elderly owner of the ranch, Sarah Burton, a prisoner. Tex Lowery, an undercover Texas Ranger, rescues Martha Williams, a nurse sent for by the ailing Sarah, from a stagecoach holdup by Lane's henchmen. He later convinces Laner that he is a wanted outlaw named Ed Carter, and gains entry to Rancho Grande. But the real Ed Carter shows up.

It's 1874 and the Texas Rangers have been reorganized. But Sam Bass has assembled a group of notorious outlaws into a gang the Rangers are unable to cope with. So the Ranger Major releases two men from prison who are familiar with the movements and locations used by Bass and his men and sends them out to find him.

Buck Peters arranges for Hoppy, California, Johnny and other cowboys to go to the aid of friends whose cattle are being rustled. Hoppy and California locate the rustlers' hideout and join the gang by posing as outlaws themselves, but must find a way to let the rest of the posse know where they are.

To fully appreciate the western comedy The Marshal's Daughter, one must be aware that its star, a zaftig, wide-eyed lass named Laurie Anders, was in 1953 a popular TV personality. A regular on The Ken Murray Show, Anders had risen to fame with the Southern-fried catchphrase "Ah love the wi-i-i-ide open spaces!" Striking while the iron was hot, the entrepreneurial Murray produced this inexpensive oater, which cast Anders as Laurie Dawson, the singing daughter of a U.S. marshal (Hoot Gibson). Teaming with her dad to capture outlaw Trigger Gans (Bob Duncan), Laurie briefly disguises herself as a masked bandit. Amidst much stock footage from earlier westerns and a plethora of lame jokes and dreadful puns, The Marshal's Daughter is a treat for trivia buffs, featuring such virile actors as Preston S. Foster, Johnny Mack Brown, Jimmy Wakely and Buddy Baer as "themselves."

Two ex-cons plan to kill the range rider marshal who sent them to prison and, when their plan fails, join forces with their former boss, a crooked saloon owner who has the same idea.

Monte Hale has been working as a teller in a Texas bank during the summer to earn money for his medical college expenses during the upcoming year. He is about to leave to return to college when the bank is held up by two members of a notorious gang, headed by Marlowe, leaving Monte with the smoking gun of one of the bandits that killed the bank president. To avoid bringing disgrace on the family of his sweetheart, Julia Collins, by revealing that it was her brother Jeff, supposedly working in Denver, who induced him to open the back door of the bank to let the robbers in, Monte allows suspicion to rest on him until he can clear himself.

Beyond the Last Frontier was the first entry in Republic's "John Paul Revere" western series. Journeyman actor Eddie Dew stars as Revere, a Texas Ranger who goes undercover to smash an outlaw gang. Meanwhile, the villains install an informer amongst the Rangers, meaning that Revere will have to take care of this guy before he can complete his assignment. While Eddie Dew was OK in the lead, his thunder was stolen by the young actor cast as "Trigger Dolan"-future superstar Robert Mitchum. The plot was a bit too complicated for a film of this nature, thus future John Paul Revere installments were a bit easier to follow.

A Pinkerton agent masquerades as a criminal in order to infiltrate a gang of counterfeiters that is using wealthy widow Lucy Randall as a front. Arriving at the gang's hideout the Dawson ranch, Red discovers that the counterfeiting ring is headed by Mrs. Randall's attorney J. Richard Spencer and Dawson himself.

A masked desperado wants to disrupt the mail service between two frontier communities.

As prisoner Ed Archer is being transferred, the stage is attacked and crashes. Archer escapes the attackers but Ranger Rocky Lane catches up with him. As Rocky is bringing him in, Archer is attacked again. Somebody wants Archer killed and Rocky, now suspecting Archer is innocent, decides to find out who and why.

Texas Ranger Buck Dunne is assigned to round up a gang of bank robbers. The leader of the gang turns out to be the "respectable" Judge Longstreth, making life difficult for Dunne inasmuch as he's in love with Longstreth's niece Barbara.

Don Barry stars as Texas Ranger Bob Standish, sworn to avenge his brother's death in Border Rangers. To achieve his goal, Standish goes undercover, joining the bandit gang.

Wanted outlaws have mysteriously disappeared. Ranger Captain Henley and Steve have a plan to find them. Steve becomes a wanted man by faking the killing of Henley. Not only is he now in trouble as both the Rangers and the Mexican Rurales are after him, but Smiley knows him and may expose his masquerade to the bad guys.

Filmed back-to-back with three other Sunset Carson vehicles in 1947, this Yucca Pictures Western starred the former Republic cowboy as a Texas Ranger chasing a gang of rustlers into the notorious outlaw territory of Three Corners. Attempting to sabotage the proposed annexation of the territory, desperado Bart Dawson (Stephen Keyes) and his men ambush Sunset and his young trainee Jed (Al Terry). The villains, who have been terrorizing pretty trading post operator Helen Bennett (Patricia Starling), are eventually defeated by the rangers in a violent gun battle and the planned annexation takes place on schedule. For all intents and purposes, the handsome but wooden Sunset Carson ended his screen career with this series of extremely low-budget Westerns, originally filmed in 16mm and released by that dumping ground of Poverty Row flotsam, Astor Pictures.

Cowboy with a reputation as the fastest gun in Texas heads to Arizona to leave his past behind, but it keeps catching up to him.

The Buck Jones western The Fighting Ranger utilizes its familiar plotline with excellent results. When Jones' kid brother is killed by the villains, our hero quits the Texas Rangers and sets off to seek vengeance on his own. He ends up just below the Mexican border, where bandit leader Cougar (Bradley Page) lives high off the hog, knowing he can't be extradited.

Inasmuch as western star Charles Starrett gained screen fame as the Robin Hood-like "Durango Kid", it stands to reason that Starrett would head the cast of Robin Hood of the Range. The star plays Steve Marlowe, the foster son of railroad manager Henry Marlowe (Kenneth McDonald). When it becomes apparent that the railroad is using underhanded methods to drive local homesteaders off their land, Steve adopts the guise of "The Vulcan", a legendary champion of justice.

A lawman who brings in a killer only to see him freed because of corruption turns in his badge & sets out on his own to rid his town of killers & crooked politicians.

A man named Chandler, claiming to be a novelist in search of local color, arrives at a town near the Mexican border, where he makes advances toward Jo, a girl living a solitary life on a desert ranch. Manning, a cowboy, suspects Chandler's motives, and his suspicions are strengthened when Chandler is caught cheating at cards. Following a gang of Mexicans to their mountain retreat, Manning learns that Chandler and the Mexicans are smuggling opium across the border. Two gang members are killed in the ensuing fight, but Chandler, wounded by Manning after a chase on the cliffs, escapes to Jo's home, where he denounces Manning as a smuggler. Manning arrives and dispels Jo's misgivings about him by revealing that he is a Texas Ranger, sworn to secrecy.