The Rough Riders ride, beware!

The Rough Riders ride, take care!

They're the finest bunch of fighters in the land!

Chasing every rustler and guerilla band!

Whenever you heard this triumphant anthem, you could bet on adventure being close behind. It was a call that signaled the arrival of the Rough Riders, three of the toughest hombres to bust up bandits and cattle thieves alike for Monogram Pictures. The team consisted of Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, and Raymond Hatton, all veterans of the western genre brought together to star in their very own series. With Jones passing away a year after their first collaboration, the Riders didn't have much time to blaze those silver-screen trails, but fans still continue to look fondly upon the films they did turn out. The Warner Archive gang sure remembers, for the eighth edition of their Monogram Cowboy Collection comes packed with six of the Rough Riders' romps, plus six flicks featuring fellow western icon and studio star, Johnny Mack Brown.

ARIZONA BOUND (1941). An ex-marshal (Jones) is coaxed out of retirement to help stop a stagecoach line from being run out of business. Arizona Bound saw the Rough Riders hitting those silver-screen prairies for the first time, in a formulaic but enjoyable adventure that established a routine most of its successors would closely follow. Saying what specific roles our heroes play in bringing the latest fiendish lot to justice would spoil the fun, as sneaking up to pull one over on the villains from multiple angles is kind of their thing. But rest assured seeing the team's plans come together is a pleasurable experience, helping perk up a done-to-death storyline with suspenseful pacing and a solid action set piece from time to time. Arizona Bound, a fun first outing for the Rough Riders, brings us an hour packed with thrills and pep aplenty.

BELOW THE BORDER (1942). The Rough Riders come to the aid of an heiress (Linda Brent) who's been fleeced of her family's jewels. The camaraderie that fueled the Riders' inaugural cinematic mission is back in Below the Border, but our plot is unfortunately even more hopelessly routine this time around. The jewelry heist premise doesn't churn out very much intrigue, and neither does the slight narrative curveball of having our romantic leading male (Dennis Moore) be in cahoots with the villains (which Brent is extraordinarily fast to forgive). But seeing the headlining trio in action definitely helps boost the entertainment value, especially when Jones is saddled with having to impersonate one of the bad guys in order to get closer to the true culprits. Though it's not worth hurrying along to load up in your DVD player of choice, Below the Border amounts to a pretty standard but passable genre flick.

FORBIDDEN TRAILS (1941). When two nasty hombres go after the marshal (Jones) who imprisoned them, his fellow lawmen set out to save him. Forbidden Trails is one of the most dizzying Monogram westerns I've seen yet, let alone the twistiest tale of spurs and stallions to feature the Rough Riders. As McCoy and Hatton search for their comrade's would-be killers, Jones refuses to take things lying down, with their respective revenge schemes all on a collision course. Our heroes face as much danger from one of their own unwittingly derailing another's plans as they do from the regular baddies, a neat trick that does a swell job of keeping the audience consistently on edge. Some of its B-western brethren have a hard time coming up with enough plot to tap out just shy of the 60-minute mark, but Forbidden Trails is the rare bird that could've lasted even longer and still been just as much fun.

GHOST TOWN LAW (1942). While looking for the men who gunned down two fellow marshals, the Rough Riders run across a woman (Virginia Carpenter) searching for her missing brother. As frugal westerns such as this were known to do on occasion, Ghost Town Law stretches its modest budget even further by confining all the action to an abandoned old burg. To make up for spending so much time within the same setting, the filmmakers have given us twice as much story, but unfortunately, neither of the prominent narratives at work pan out with arresting results. Not much use is made out of the maze of mines in which the Riders' prey hides out, and the efforts of Carpenter's character to fend off those trying to steal her inheritance amount to but a pale shadow of a whodunit. Add in the fact that the extra-murky photography makes chunks of the film's final act hard to make out, and Ghost Town Law emerges as one of the Riders' few stumbles.

THE GUNMAN FROM BODIE (1941). A supposed outlaw (Jones) falls in with the outfit responsible for killing an innocent family. Right from the start, The Gunman from Bodie lets you know it's going to be a more emotionally heavy picture than your average Monogram romp. The ominous lighting and foreboding thunder that highlight the opening minutes -- wherein Jones rescues a baby from a grisly murder scene -- gives off a most moody first impression, effectively getting across just how high this film's stakes are. Even better, the addition of these darker elements to the plot don't interfere with the kind of escapist thrills the Rough Riders were pros in delivering to viewers, as it helps their search for what proves to be a deep network of lowdown creeps feel doubly exciting. With the right level of thematic grit applied to the literal dust movies such as this like to kick up, The Gunman from Bodie turns out to be a surprisingly stirring out-west odyssey.

LAW OF THE VALLEY (1944).Two prospectors (Brown and Hatton) stumble across a land scheme while hunting for their pal's killer. In spite of its charismatic headliners and their folksy charm, Law of the Valley is way too stuck on autopilot to rouse anyone's fighting spirit. Just barely clocking in around 53 minutes, the picture hurriedly tears through what little story material it possesses in the first place, only to find itself taking the most anticlimactic avenues through which it can further the plot. It's an unexciting hunt for greedy land-grabbers that grows so disinterested in itself, old Johnny Mack immediately goes from bringing the last of the fiends to justice to galloping off to other adventures, without so much as a scene transition. Aside from an intriguing twist or two, Law of the Valley hasn't a lot to offer in terms of pulse-pounding peril.

OVER THE BORDER (1950). A Wells Fargo man (Brown) gets hip to nefarious goings-on in his territory. I've made my share of cracks about these quickie westerns being so similar that you can forget what you're watching while you're watching it, but that's precisely the case with yours truly and Over the Border. Not even the welcome presence of such genre stalwarts as Marshall Reed and House Peters, Jr. are enough to counteract the movie's absolutely stale set-up. There's darn near nothing of distinction with what unfolds here. It's just another tired tale of Brown riding up to stop cardboard bad guys from doing bad guy things. 

SILVER RANGE (1946). Two range detectives (Brown and Hatton) run afoul of a gang of smugglers. Though it shares an almost identical premise with Over the Border, what Silver Range does with the material yields far more compelling cinema. It's still not crackling with that much originality,  for the plot plays out exactly as you'd expect, but the flick is charged with enough energy not to tune you out at the five-minute mark. Brown's down-home disposition is as appealing as ever, Hatton is a hoot, and western fans will be glad to glimpse such familiar faces as Cactus Mack and -- one of my personal favorites -- I. Stanford Jolley. While there isn't much to Silver Range, what we get is presented with the right amount of humor and vim to make the time blaze by relatively fast.

SIX GUN MESA (1950). Johnny Mack Brown swoops in to save the day when an innocent cowpuncher (Riley Hill) gets set up for murder. You know that Six Gun Mesa is in trouble once you realize  it takes the main character a fifth of the running time to mosey along into frame. Be they the blandest protagonists on God's green earth or the most stock baddies you've ever seen, this movie has no shortage of characters stalling for time whenever possible. Whatever excitement one could glean from a plot that doesn't have many gripping layers to begin with is soon snuffed out by the stiflingly simplistic storytelling at work. An eleventh-hour burst of gunplay tries its hardest, but it's hardly enough to spare Six Gun Mesa from its mediocre fate.

WEST OF THE LAW (1942). The Rough Riders lend an assist when a journalist (Milburn Morante) tries getting to the bottom of a bandit scourge. West of the Law features the Riders in their typical, justice-defending form, albeit a little more subdued. While some gunfire is exchanged in the first couple scenes, our boys mostly fight the good fight on the sly, helping Morante's newspaperman assemble a new printing press so he can raise awareness of the crimewave. I'd be fibbing if I said this low-key approach wasn't listless at times, but luckily, the movie finds its footing in time to deliver a finale that's nice and riveting. What it may lack in gunpowder, West of the Law compensates for with gumption in spades.

WEST OF THE RIO GRANDE (1944). A marshal (Brown) impersonates a feared gunslinger who's been assigned to rig a local election. While it gets off to a bit of a leisurely start, West of the Rio Grande quickly finds a suspenseful groove and settles into it. Johnny Mack is caught in one of his tighest spots yet, what with having to carry out the evil orders of his alter ego's boss (Kenneth MacDonald) and work to dismantle his operations at the same time. Figuring out how Brown is going to gain the upper hand isn't so easy this time around, as our hero must stop the sleazy politicos from getting wise to his scheme and save his own skin from the angry townspeople. We could've gotten some more comic relief from Hatton's Sandy Hopkins going undercover as a schoolteacher, but that's no reason to pass up West of the Rio Grande, one of Johnny Mack's most enjoyable outings.

WEST OF WYOMING (1950). With homesteaders about to settle on gold-rich land, a government agent (Brown) aims to save them from villains seeking the loot for themselves. Signs of a more substantial film can be picked up all throughout West of Wyoming, but unfortunately, most of that potential eeks by ungrasped at the end. The idea of landowners clashing with settlers claiming what was theirs is uncommonly complex for a B-western, and one subplot involving a greedy old geezer (Stanley Andrews) and the grandson he never met comes to a more dramatic conclusion than expected. But most of those elements that might have led to a more thoughtful story are largely ignored, in favor of delivering viewers a cut-to-the-chase thriller that -- in all fairness -- is still relatively fun. While I can't help pondering the picture that could've been, West of Wyoming packs in just under an hour's worth of passable genre entertainment all the same.

(Monogram Cowboy Collection: Volume 8 is available from the Warner Archive Collection.)