Jennifer Holt | Through the Shattered Lens

On the frontier, a stagecoach has been overturned and both the passenger and the driver have been killed by outlaws. The passenger was Hinkley, an archeologist. Who would want to kill a harmless archeologist? That’s what Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) set out to discover. While Nevada Jack asks questions in the nearby town, Sandy disguises himself as a medicine man.

It all links back to an old Indian site that is said to be full of gold relics. Jane (Jennifer Holt), the daughter of Hinkley’s partner, reveals that the only other person who knows the location of the site is an old Indian named Shag (Dimas Sotello). Jack and Sandy have to try to track down Shag before he’s found the gang that killed Hinkley.

Yes, it’s another Johnny Mack Brown western. Despite the title, this has nothing to do with the television series that featured James Arness and Amanda Blake. Gun Smoke is still a solid western, featuring a determined performance from Johnny Mack Brown and some memorable villains from the usual poverty row western stock company. Once again, Frank Ellis shows up as a henchman, though the identity of the main villain is actually a little more interesting than was typical for these films. Johnny Mack Brown is a little more serious than usual, throwing punches with authority. For fans of B-westerns, Gun Smoke is an above average entry in Johnny Mack Brown’s seemingly endless filmography.

gtr When a federal surveyor disappears while checking out the ghost town of Waterhole, the U.S. Marshall sends Cheyenne Davis (Lash La Rue) and Fuzzy Jones (Al “Fuzzy” St. John) to investigate. It turns out that gold has been discovered around Waterhole, on land owned by the Trent Family. Bad guy Vance Sharpe (Jack Ingram) is trying to kill the last remaining Trents — Rodney (Steve Frost) and his daughter, Diane (Jennifer Holt) — so that he can claim the land as his own. As Cheyenne and Fuzzy investigate, there are plenty of shootouts, fist fights, and an out of control stagecoach. Since this is a Lash LaRue film, there is also a lot of exciting bullwhip action.

If you’re like me, the name Lash La Rue immediately makes you think of Pulp Fiction and Harvey Keitel asking John Travolta, “What about you, Lash La Rue, can you keep your spurs from jingling and jangling?” But, long before Quentin Tarantino ever came up with that line of dialogue, Lash La Rue was a legitimate Western star, starring in several B-westerns in the 1940s and 50s. What set Lash apart from other western stars was that he looked like he could have been Humphrey Bogart’s younger brother, he always wore black, and he often used a bullwhip instead of a gun. In fact, when Harrison Ford needed someone to train him how to use a bullwhip for Raiders of the Lost Ark, 65 year-old Lash La Rue was the man that they called.

I have read that Ghost Town Renegades is considered to be the best of La Rue’s movies. I haven’t seen enough of them to say whether it’s the best but Ghost Town Renegades is an entertaining and fast-paced B-western. Lash La Rue is good with a whip, Jennifer Holt is beautiful, and not even the broad comedy of Fuzzy St. John detracts.

Interesting to note: Jennifer Holt, who co-starred in several of La Rue’s movies, was the daughter of Jack Holt and the sister of Tim Holt, both of whom were prominent western stars themselves.