Author Archive: Retro

A stray German shepherd, a runaway teenage boy, and a runaway teenage girl end up at her uncle’s place in Oregon, where an epidemic of sheep rustling is under way.

Wandering cowboy Tyler buys a ranch from a lady who inherited the ranch from her grandfather, and claims his ghost scares away prospective buyers. Produced by Sam Katzman. Dir. Bob Hill

Advertised as the first movie shot entirely in Arizona, which it wasn’t (the first movie shot in Arizona, that is) by several country miles and years, and featuring Arizonians such as ten-year-old Ruth Reece, a singer on radio station KOY, and Doc Pardee, a horse trainer who also had the reputation as the fastest talking rodeo announcer in the profession, the story takes place on the Coburn Ranch (played by the real Gillespie Ranch in southern Arizona), a cattle empire that stretches over many thousand of acres, but has fallen on hard times because the owner, “Wild Bill” Coburn, owes the government $80,000 in back taxes. Coburn sees two solutions to the problem; one is for his thoroughbred, Sky Lancer, to win the Arizona Derby, and the other is to have his daughter Georgia marry the wealthy “Van” Van Wyck, whose horse, “The Gem” is Sky Lancer’s only rival for the derby purse. Roving cowhands [...]

To escape former buddy Pat Garrett, Doc hides Billy at his mistress’, which turns out to be a bad idea when Billy falls for her. Hughes battled censors for years to get this film released, due to its “steamy” content. Dir. Howard Robard Hughes

Roy visits his home town while on a personal appearance tour. While there he enters a pony express race. To keep him from winning, bad guys try to sabotage Roy’s entry. They fail, or course.

After years of wandering, Tim returns to Sagebrush where he is suspected of murder and the conflict between him and Sheriff Hurley is reignited. After Tim beats Hurley in a wrestling match he goes to the bank to collect. But Hurley and banker Blackton, taking money from the bank, claim Tim robbed the bank.

This film was produced and released in 1944 by Film Enterprises for the 16mm school-and-institutional market, and was picked up and released in 1948 by Astor for theatrical 35mm showings. Both versions finds the citizens of Rockford upset over a series of murders and robberies. The Sundowners, Andy Clyde (Andy Clyde), Jay Kirby (Jay Kirby) and Russ Wade (Russell Wade), ride into Rockford and innocently takes jobs with Tug Wilson (Jack Ingram) and his tough crew of line riders, who are in cahoots with Yeager (Hal Price) in a big land swindle scheme. The Sundowners fight their way out of Wilson’s camp, and seeing a runaway, give chase and rescue Donna Fraser (Evelyn Finley, who, in the real world, could outride all three of them), daughter of Dan Fraser (Steve Clark), who owns the land Yeager is after. They join forces with local Ranger Bob Casey (Marshall Reed) against the Wilson/Yeager faction. Seeking to escape, [...]

Both Nolan and Ross are losing cattle and Ross’ foreman Kerns is the culprit. When Taylor finds a wanted poster of Kerns he goes after him.

Rival ranchers squabble over the rights to some oil land which borders both of their properties, and also find time to fight for the affections of a pretty cowgirl. Dir. Lambert Hillyer