Best movies like Fighting Valley

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.

Poachers are harassing toll road owner Jen Larrabee. They want her land because it holds valuable minerals. Autry and the Cass County Boys, mistaken for Texas Rangers, help out.

Chip has inherited a supposedly worthless gold mine from her father and Craig Allen is about to buy it. Roy suspects the mine may be valuable and using a clue left by Chip's father, investigates. He finds the hidden shaft that contains the gold and with the posse chasing him on a trumped up robbery charge, races to town with ore samples hoping to get there before the ownership is transferred.

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.

A Texas Ranger tries to bring down counterfeiters selling fake lottery tickets.

A Texas Ranger goes up against the Morrow outlaw gang.

With thousands of cattle being rustled from White Sage ranch the 1930's Texas Rangers are called in. They manage to get one of their agents into the gang by making them think he is the Pecos Kid on the lam.

Marshal Rocky Lane is sent to help the Sheriff who is under attack from both the miners whose ore wagons are disappearing and the newspaper editor for not catching the outlaws. But the editor is actually the leader of the gang and with the election forthcoming, she has a plan to make the Sheriff look bad so her son will be elected Sheriff thereby making it easy for them to continue with their robberies.

After a handful of non-formula westerns, Charles Starrett returned to the mixture as before in Thundering Frontier. Starrett plays Jim Fillmore, kind to old ladies, small animals and heroine Norma Belknap (Iris Meredith). In contrast, the villains are kind to no one, least of all struggling building contractor Square Deal Scottie (Alex Callam), whose projects are continually targeted for demolition and his payroll is forever being stolen at gunpoint. A good 25 percent of the film's running time is given over to Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers, whose C&W croonings are pleasant but a bit much. One of the film's few surprises is that Starrett's perennial screen sparring partner Dick Curtis isn't one of the bad guys.

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.

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.

Tim Hart (Tim McCoy), a former Texas Ranger, comes out of retirement to avenge the death of Lightnin' Ed (Frank LaRue), his foster father, who had been sent to Rainbow's End, to investigate a series of train robberies. He senses that George Johnson (Walter McGrail) and his henchman, Speck (Bob Kortman), head the robbery gang, especially after Speck makes an ambush attempt on his life.

In this western, fake settlers make themselves at home on an ex-ranger's ranch and drive him away. A shady newspaper publisher and a gambler then conspire to take over the land. Fortunately, another ranger endeavors to help his pal. Enlisting the aide of his fellow rangers, they get oust the homesteaders. The publisher and the gambler shoot each other and the retired ranger gets his ranch back.

The citizens and near-by ranchers of a western town are being besieged by a gang of rustlers and robbers, and a plea is made to the governor to send a troop of rangers. Shortly, thereafter a dude-costumed cowboy shows up but he only asks a lot of dumb questions and does a lot of stick-whittling as he wanders the streets and hangs out in the saloon with the regular barflies. The citizens mark him down as being 'tetched in the head.' Also, shortly after the whittler arrives, a mysterious black-masked rider begins to make life a bit tougher on them than it had been.

Megalomaniacal rancher is a law unto himself, until a Ranger is called-upon to bring him to justice.

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

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.

Sent to Mexico to buy a bull, a Wyoming cowhand (Doug McClure) teams up with three Texas Rangers to solve a robbery/murder.

The Texas Rangers send Dave and Chito into the badlands to see if they can locate a counterfeiting operation. They arrive posing as wanted outlaws and this gets them into the gang. But as soon as they uncover the operation and locate the printing press, one of Chito's girl friends arrives to expose their identity and they find themselves trapped by the entire gang.

Ellen Williams' father has a valuable collection of furs and an outlaw gang is after them. Before he is killed, Williams hides a note revealing their location. The Texas Rangers are on the job and to get more information, they have Panhandle pose as an Indian chief.

While Sam Houston in in the nation's capital trying to get Texas into the Union, his aide is trying to impose a self-serving tax on the use of the Santa Fe trail. The lady owner of a wagon train is using the trail, and a Texas Ranger comes to her assistance.

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.

Former Texas Ranger Wade Patterson (Starrett) returns to his home town, only to find that the territory is in the grip of cattle rustlers. For a while, it looks as though heroine Linda Holden (Meredith) is in cahoots with the bad guys, but Patterson quickly clears her name and takes on the crooks himself.

Charles Starrett plays two-fisted frontiersman Dart Collins in this slick Columbia "B" western. Collins wants to find out who's behind a series of gold-shipment robberies. So does heroine Judy Garfield (Iris Meredith), whose stage transport business faces foreclosure if the holdups continue. It comes as no surprise that the crimes are being orchestrated by the very people who want to force Judy out of business.

Tex Wyatt is blamed for a murder actually committed by Ransom and Holman, a couple of thieves. Tex manages to escape and is reunited with his two ranger pals Jim Steele and Panhandle Perkins, both of whom are working undercover as performers in a medicine show.

Texas Ranger Todd Crayden is assigned a suicide mission South of the Border, to smuggle a government agent into Mexico...

Sunset Carson rides into the town of Cimarron looking for his brother and the crooks who framed him for cattle rustling. When he's made sheriff, he struggles to keep order in a place overrun by thieves and liars. Cimarron is a wild town overrun by outlaws. Sunset, who was framed as a cattle rustler, has just been released from prison after 3 years when he winds up in Cimarron.

Peggy Barlou is a young rancher who refuses to sell her spread to greedy stage-line proprietor John Rankin. Tex Haines, meanwhile, is accused of killing Bill Dugan, Rankin's bodyguard, but eludes capture long enough to hook up with Dave Wyatt and Panhandle Perkins, a couple of rangers in disguise.

Jolley is the leader of the Devil's Brand gang of rustlers. When Molly Dawson sends for the Texas Rangers, Tex, Jim, and Panhandle arrive pretending not to know each other. But eventually their identities become known and they are captured by the gang.

Tex put the Kern gang away once but they have returned with reinforcements and have take over the town of Red Rock capturing the townsmen and forcing them to work for them in the gold mines. Dave and Tex then organize the ranchers into the Territorial Rangers. After blowing up the mines to keep the gang from getting the gold, they are ready for the showdown between the two sides. Written by Maurice VanAuken

Ranger Job "Blue Streak" McCoy helps a miner and his pretty young daughter who are trying to protect their valuable mine from a gang leader who wants to take it.

When power-hungry Faulkner and Leroux want to divide Texas into smaller sections, instead of allowing it to enter the Union as a single state, Gary Conway and the Texas Rangers must step in to thwart their chicanery.

Jeff arrives in town to see the Sheriff only to find him just killed. The culprit is Clay Wheeler. When Jeff becomes friendly with Letty, Clay sends his man Ortega to kill him. Jeff foils the attempt and gets him to confess that Clay was the killer. With only old-timers Lafe and Bill to help, Jeff heads after Clay and his gang.

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.

The old bromide about the western town run by outlaws as a hideout for their fellow crooks makes a return appearance in Monogram's Land of the Outlaws. Since the crooks include such reliable disreputables as Charles King and John Merton, the good guys really have their work cut out for them. But not to worry! The heroes are Johnny Mack Brown and Raymond Hatton, whose B-western track record is unbeatable. Land of the Outlaws was directed by Lambert Hillyer, whose sense of rhythm and pace had saved many another inexpensive oater.

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

Taylor has his men burning out the ranchers. When they kill Clayton, his daughter Helen and her men turn outlaw. The Rangers send Logan, and posing as a cowhand he joins her gang. But Nevada eventually remembers him as a Ranger and they set out to hang him.

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.

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.

"Iron Mike" Haines (Tom Chatterton), a crooked sheriff, and "Hands" Weber (Roy Barcroft), the town blacksmith, are in cahoots and have been robbing stages, silver mines, etc., and framing innocent ranchers and cowhands with their deeds. They set out to rob the stage and frame Red Ryder (Bill Elliott as Wild Bill Elliott) for it, but the plan backfires and the sheriff is killed. The sheriff's son, Tommy (Jack McClendon), arrives home from college and is given his dad's job, not knowing he was a crook, and swears to get the man who killed him. Weber tells Tommy that Red killed his dad and Tommy sets out to get Red.

An undercover Texas Ranger runs into trouble when he learns that the murderer he's trailing has a twin brother.

Jim Steele spots Pete Dawson taking horses over the Mexico-Texas border, but Dawson has an alibi. A new group of recruits arrives at the Ranger station, among them Tex Wyatt, the son of Ranger Captain John Wyatt, whom he hasn't seen for many years. Captain Wyatt tells Tex that he is in the Rangers strictly on his own merit and there will be no favors played. He assigns Tex to pick up Dawson's trail, but orders that no arrest be made without proof.

Tom Martin wants to buy the Jed Warren ranch as he knows the railroad wants it for the right-of-way, but Jed refuses to sell...

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.

An outlaw named Duane ( Tom Mix ), captured by the Texas Rangers, is promised a pardon if he rounds up a gang of cattle thieves. The man he suspects as the leader is revealed to be the father of Duane's sweetheart, Helen ( Billie Dove ). Duane captures the gang, gets a pardon for Helen's father, and marries Helen.

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.

The Durango Kid rides again in Lightning Guns. As ever, the masked Durango (alias Steve Brandon) is played by Charles Starrett, who this time around is on the trail of a gang of cold-blooded killers. Rancher Dan Saunders (Edgar Dearing) is held responsible for the killings because of his opposition to a politically expedient dam project. Durango believes that Saunders is innocent, and he intends to prove it.

The Texas Rangers take on a shyster who is trying to bilk a family of their money after he learns that an oil company thinks their land may contain the black gold.

Texas Ranger O'Brien has an outlaw twin brother. When his sibling is killed, O'Brien assumes his identity in order to infiltrate a gang of stagecoach robbers.