User Reviews

This murder/revenge western was the end of the line for the great Republic Pictures. John Carroll, the B-movie version of Clark Gable, leads this film that was actually pretty entertaining.

The plot, while fairly standard, does hold the viewers attention and the casting was very unique. Look for Bea Benaderet (later of Petticoat Junction fame ) as well as Joe Besser ---- the former Third Stooge ! As Republic Pictures run ended, so did the heyday of Carroll's career. He was very personable and watchable ...... but was never able to find the break out role that would have launched him to stardom.

A slightly above average western/murder mystery ......

With Plunderers Of Painted Flats, Republic Studios came to an end of an over 20 year run as a B film studio. Its bread and butter were the westerns that you now found on the small screen. A medium that had Republic's president Herbert J. Yates embraced, Republic might still be in the western business.

But if not with a classic western Republic went out with a good one with some unusual themes like wedding night jitters which you'd never see in one of Roy and Dale's films.

George MacReady is at his most malevolent here, a large Ponderosa ranch owner who wants to get larger. He has no scruples whatever chasing whom he deems squatters off his land. One of his gang shoots down the father of Skip Homeier and little Ricky Allen and then an old gunfighter played Edmund Lowe shoots down the gang member of MacReady who did the deed.

That's when MacReady decides some really specialized help is needed so he sends for another gunfighter John Carroll who is like a malevolent version of Shane. On the same stagecoach that Carroll are three mail order brides, Madge Kennedy, Bea Benedaret, and Corinne Calvet and Calvet is intended for Skip Homeier and she's a woman who's been around and Homeier hasn't.

Those are the plot ingredients and even given the cheapness of production I have to say the story is well acted and well told. Carroll gives one of his best screen performances, sadly enough in a neglected western.

I have to say that Herbert J. Yates did end his studio's output with a good one. Definitely catch this one if broadcast.