House Peters Jr. | Through the Shattered Lens

Johnny Mack Brown rides across the old west until he reaches a seemingly abandoned ranch. Someone takes a shot at him with a gold bullet. It’s because the the ranch has a reputation for being haunted and everyone knows that the only way to take care of a ghost is to shoot at it with gold bullets.

(It’s common frontier knowledge!)

Johnny may says that he’s a simple cowhand who has been hired to look after the ranch but actually, he’s a government agent who has been sent to investigate the disappearance of rancher John Roberts (Forrest Taylor) and the theft of government gold. Bill Grant (House Peters, Jr.) is the main suspect in the Roberts disappearance but Roberts’s daughter (Lois Hall) insists that he’s innocent. Even though Roberts forbid Grant from seeing his daughter, Johnny Mack Brown suspects that Grant is being set up as well. Brown doesn’t buy the idea of the ranch being haunted either. If Fuzzy Knight was there, he’d probably see a ghost but Fuzzy takes this film off. Time for Johnny Mack Brown to investigate.

Despite the exciting title, Blazing Bullets is only a so-so B-western. Working without his usual sidekicks, Brown just goes through the motions and there’s not nearly enough action. A movie called Blazing Bullets should have had more blazing bullets in it. Today, it’s impossible to watch the film without expecting Harvey Korman to show up as Hedley Lamarr.

Tom and Fred Denton (Preston Foster and Jim Davis) are two frontier lawmen who are frustrated with their jobs. They are both owed backpay. When they shoot an outlaw, they are expected to pay the $80 burial fee. Neither Tom nor Fred feels that they are appreciated by banks and the railroads that expect them to risk their lives on a daily basis.

When Tom and Fred are informed that their younger brother, Matt (Kim Spalding), has been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in another town, they ride off to save him.

Even though Tom and Fred can both provide an alibi for Matt and it is obvious that Matt has been framed by a corrupt railroad agent, the town is still determined to hang him. Tom and Fred manage to rescue him from the gallows but, in the process, a deputy is killed. Now wanted by the authorities, the Denton brothers are forced to team up with the same outlaws that they used to hunt. Soon, the Dentons are robbing banks and trains and their old friend, Pete Coleman (Monte Blue), has been ordered to captured them, dead or alive.

One of the many low budget westerns to be produced by the Lippert Company, Three Desperate Men is a cut above the usual B-western. None of the Dentons want to be outlaws but they are forced into it by circumstances out of their control. The real villains of the film are the bankers and the railroad tycoons who hoard the land and the money and who try to cheat men like Tom and Fred out of their rightfully earned wages. The Denton brothers ultimately decide that their number one loyalty is to each other and that leads to the movie’s fatalistic conclusion, which is surprisingly violent for a 1951 western. Preston Foster, Jim Davis, and Monte Blue head a cast that is full of tough and authentic western veterans and the action scenes are imaginatively staged by director Sam Newfield. Three Desperate Men is a B-western that can be enjoyed even by those who don’t like westerns.