Best movies like Thundering Frontier

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.

US marshal Lawlor (Starrett) takes on a gang of cattle rustlers headed by Taylor (Dick Curtis). His reasons are partly personal: Conway (Edward LeSaint), the cattle-baron father of Lawlor's sweetheart Madge (Meredith), has been murdered by Taylor's minions.

In an effort to compete with Republic's popular songfest Westerns, fours music numbers -- including Tumbling Tumbleweeds -- were added to The Old Wyoming Trail, an otherwise average Charles Starrett vehicle. No singer, Starrett left the vocalizing to his sidekick Donald Grayson and the popular Sons of the Pioneers. En route to purchase a herd of cattle, Bob Patterson (Starrett) and his sidekick Sandy (Grayson) get in the way of a scheme to defraud the local ranchers of their possessions.

A group of frontier businessmen set up a protective organization for the purpose of extorting money from the local ranchers.

The Caravan Trail stars PRC Pictures' resident singing cowboy Eddie Dean. This time around, wagonmaster Dean is appointed sheriff of a lawless frontier territory. Immediately getting down to business, our hero goes after a band of land-grabbing outlaws who've been terrorizing the homesteaders. The film is stolen hands down by supporting play Al LaRue, who as "Lash" LaRue would eventually be awarded a western series of his own. Like most of Eddie Dean's 1946 releases, The Caravan Trail was lensed in the two-hued Cinecolor process. Read more at http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-caravan-trail-v8165#ome2SWX8mH31k9yd.99

A singing entomologist (Roy Rogers) acts meek to help a juggling sheriff (George "Gabby" Hayes) solve ranch raids.

Bill Underwood falls out with his father and chooses the life of a cowhand rather than take charge of his father's stage line.

Mahoney is a sheep man who's framed for the murder of a rancher. It's all part of a scheme by a dishonest cattleman who hopes to extenuate a range war for his own profit. The Durango Kid helps clear Mahoney's name.

Hero Jeff Strong (Starrett) comes to the rescue of a group of victimized ranchers. The villains are a gang of crooked gamblers, who demand a valuable dam as payment for a $50,000 debt. The ranchers hope to earn the money by getting their cattle to market on time, but head bad guy Cash Fenton (Kenneth MacDonald) and his flunkey Lobo (Dick Curtis) intend to prevent this.

The Durango Kid is a sort of Robin Hood of the West who helps the lovely Walters (who replaced Starrett's usual love-interest, Iris Meredith), the daughter of a homesteader, defeat the evil MacDonald who has been terrorizing the decent citizens with his gang of rustlers.

Stage line owner Brent has his men robbing Halliday stages and when his manager Waring learns of it, Brent has him killed. Jeff Waring arrives and takes his uncle's job. He soon learns what's happening and the Durango Kid goes into action. This keeps Halliday going and gives them a chance to get the mail contract by winning the stagecoach race.

Tex is up against a group of hooded outlaws. When he shoots one, he uses the hood to infiltrate the gang. Almost caught by them, he escapes only to be arrested by the Sheriff who thinks he's one of the gang.

Sheep raisers, resentful of old injuries from the cattlemen, bar the way to water when dry ranges force the cattle ranchers to drive their herds into the lowlands.

Things get under way when US marshal Tom (Starrett) finds himself in the midst of a range war. The villains are a band of rustlers who play both sides of the confrontation against one another, the better to move in and claim all the livestock.

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.

Frontiersman Tom Garfield and his pals endeavor to save their land from the clutches of slimy easterner Forsyth. The villain hires a bit of local muscle in the form of brutish Chris Matson, but he's no match for our hero.

Freight wagons are being stolen and ransomed back to their owners. Government agent Steve Langtry (and his alter ego the Durango Kid) is sent break up the Hood Gang that's behind the robberies.

In this North western, a brave Canadian Mountie pursuing a gang of fur thieves finds himself drummed out of the RCMP and forced to run a gauntlet of Mountie whips. When the gang learns of this, they convince him to join them.

In this western a traveling gun ends up in a small town and rescues an important rancher. Out of gratitude the rancher hires him to protect his land and cattle from his violent rival. It is revealed that the gunman is the son of the ruthless rival; he therefore, loses his job and finds himself entangled in the midst of a range war. He must eventually face his father when the bad guy takes over the only trail to the market.

Charles Starrett plays lawman Steve Forsythe in Ridin' the Outlaw Trail. Somewhere along the line, of course, Steve is obliged to don the mask of The Durango Kid, mysterious righter of wrongs. The "wrongs" in this instance include the theft of $20,000 in gold, and the "kidnapping" of a blacksmith's forge! Jim Bannon, who only a few months earlier had played the heroic Red Ryder, provides the villainy in this fast-paced "Durango Kid" entry

The story revolves around a valuable silver deposit, located between two ranches. Villain Lash Bender cooks up a scheme to gain control of both ranches so that he may have a clear field to the silver lode.

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.

Riding Through Nevada is a western starring Charles Starrett

Federal agent Steve Lawton works undercover with his assistant, Smiley Burnette, to track down an outlaw gang that is raiding government gold shipments bound for Fort Navajo.

The hero, Texas Ranger Larry Whalen (Charles Starrett), is on the trail of a mysterious outlaw leader.

No relation to the 1950 John Ford classic of the same name, Rio Grande is yet another rubber-stamp Charles Starrett western from the Columbia assembly line.

Pinto Kid was one of Charles Starrett's last "formula" westerns before he permanently assumed the screen guise of the Durango Kid. The story takes places just after the Civil War, with hostilities between Yanks and Rebels still in effect between Kansas and Texas. The villain, cattle rustler Vic Landreau (Paul Sutton), intends to play both factions down the middle for his own benefit. But Landreau meets his match in the form of wandering do-gooder Jud Calvert (Charles Starrett).

Filmed at the Providencia Ranch (today's Forrest Lawn in Burbank, CA), this typical "Durango Kid" Western featured the Cass County Boys performing "Go West Young Lady" by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, in addition to series regular Smiley Burnette singing his own "It's My Turn" and "The Yodeler. This time, the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) is chasing down a gang of outlaws shipping stolen gold in crates marked "ring bolts," ably assisted by Smiley, a treasury agent working undercover as a house painter. Virginia Maxey supplies female interest and little Tommy Ivo, in one of his six appearances in the Durango Kid series, also gets in the way of the action.

The Durango Kid and his sidekick look for stolen gold with a history.

Western star Charles Starrett was amazing; he kept making the same film over and over, but always made it seem as if it was for the first time. In West of Sonora, Starrett once again plays a frontier good-guy named Steve (Steve Rollins, to be exact), who, when the need arises, disguises himself as The Durango Kid, masked righter of wrongs. This time, Steve/Durango champions the cause of 10-year-old Penelope Clinton (Anita Castle), who has spent her short life as the focus of a feud between her grandfathers, suspected outlaw Black Murphy (Steve Darrell) and Sheriff Jack Clinton (George Cheseboro).

A late entry in Columbia's seemingly endless Durango Kid Western series, Cyclone Fury was augmented with a hefty dose of stock footage from an earlier Durango effort, Galloping Thunder (1946), footage that included sidekick Smiley Burnette warbling "Hear the Wind (Singing a Cowboy Song)" accompanied by Merle Travis and his Bronco Busters.

Steve Martin is sent to Wild River to recover stolen gold and finds the town is being terrorized by The Hawk and his outlaw gang. The Hawk attempts to murder Sheriff Jack Mahoney and is captured and jailed. Steve helps the Hawk break jail and thus makes contact with the bandit gang. He sends a bungling photographer, Smiley Burnette, to warn the sheriff that the gang plan to rob the express office.

A major Indian uprising is expected and Wyoming military posts are alerted. Colonel Dennison is meeting with Chief Eagle and his son Running Wolf when Chief Eagle is mysteriously shot. Steve Holden, an agent for the government peace commission, with the aid of a wandering shoemaker, Smiley, discover the troubles and the Chief's murder have been instigated by Cronin, the regimental scout, for personal gain for he and his gang of outlaws.

Dakota Indian Agent Steve Reynolds receives a copy of the Bonanza City Nuggett from Jim Mallory and reads a story blaming the Durango Kid for recent gold mine raids.

A masked outlaw steals from bank robbers to help the poor.

In this western, a decent Indian agent loses his job and his good name after someone steals the government money he was to deliver to a tribe. Because he cannot bear to see the people starve over the long winter, he begins searching for the robbers. He does so by looking for the unusual coins that had been included in the payroll.

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

In this western, a rancher is ambushed, killed, and robbed, but for some reason the killers through his money pouch in the bushes without opening it. Later a woman happens upon the cash and finds herself a prime suspect in the killing. Fortunately, a survey engineer proves her innocence, and they begin looking for the real villains.

The Durango Kid sets out to clear his name after being falsely accused of a payroll robbery.

Steve Beaumont, an operative for the Cattleman's Protective Association, is assigned the difficult task of breaking up a murderous gang of rustlers led by Ed Brock and Strang. He takes Sheriff Webb, Judge Baxter, and rancher Ann Houston into his confidence, and works his way into the rustler stronghold and confidence by "turning rustler" himself.

Thad Lawson arrives in Oak Valley to avenge the murder of his brother, the local sheriff. He learns that Jack Rand, powerful overlord of the town is to blame. After Rand murders newspaper publisher Jordan Webster, Thad sets out to put him behind bars.

Charles Starrett is once more cast as frontier doctor Steve Monroe in Columbia's Prairie Stranger. In the company of his comic sidekick, mail-order intern Bones (Cliff Edwards), Dr. Monroe sets up his shingle in a small Nevada town. When business is slow, Monroe and Bones take jobs as ranch-hands on a cattle spread, and while thus employed try to solve a series of mysterious livestock poisonings.

The Kinkaids and the Harpers both run stage lines and are friendly competitors. Appleby is after the stage line and convinces the two owners to build a spur line to the same town. Then he has both projects sabotaged pitting the friends against each other and running them out of money.

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.

In this adventure, a courageous Canadian Mountie must bring peace an embattled miner and an unscrupulous trader whose price mark-ups are beginning to hurt the community. They fight so frequently that when the avaricious proprietor is killed, the young man becomes the prime suspect.

The Durango Kid rides again in Columbia's Landrush. As ever, the masked do-gooder, alias Steve Harmon, is played by Charles Starrett. Bringing up the rear in every sense of the word is Harmon's comical sidekick Smiley Burnette. In this outing, Harmon dons his Durango garb to rescue a group of homesteaders from scurrilous villains. Musical relief is provided by Ozie Waters and his Colorado Rangers.

Steve Driscoll arrives to help a friend who is trying to bring in an oil well. He finds that the well has been blown up and the workers have quit. He gets the workers back on the job and orders a new drill bit . When the drill bit is stolen he organizes the townspeople to invest in the well. But when the money is collected, a fake Durango Kid shows up to take it and flee

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.

Briefly switching gears in 1942 and 1943, western star Charles Starrett made a handful of "northerns" in which he played a Canadian mountie. In Law of the Northwest, Steve King (Starrett) supervises a road-construction project designed to transport war materials to the Aleutians. Problems arise when a crooked contractor decides that his interests are more important than the war effort.

A caravan of settlers is arriving and the ranchers intend to keep them out. It looks like a range war but Sheriff Jim gets the ranchers to accept the settlers. Kohler re-ignites the feud by making settler Winters appear to be a rustler and then by killing Winter's son. Once more the two sides appear headed for a war and Jim is caught in the middle.