Oscar Gahan | Through the Shattered Lens

In Mexico, two American cowboys, Johnny Darrel (Johnny Mack Brown) and Dick Martin (Julian Madison) join a poker game to try to win some money and help out their buddy, Oscar (Sid Saylor). When they discover that cantina owner Manuel Mendez (Ted Adams) has rigged the game, a fight breaks out. The lights turn off. In the darkness, several guns are fired. When the lights come back up, Dick is dead. Mendez convinces Johnny that he accidentally shot his friend in the fight. Guilt-stricken, Johnny tosses aside his guns and returns to Texas.

Johnny has sworn that he will never shoot another gun but when he’s hired to work at a ranch owned by Joan Williams (Claire Rochelle), he finds himself in the middle of a range war between Joan and Brace Stevens (Dick Curtis), with Mendez also making an unwelcome return to Johnny’s life. Even after Johnny discovers the truth about what happened that night at the cantina, he doesn’t pick up a gun. Instead, Johnny fights the bad guys with lassos and plates.

Guns In The Dark is only 54 minutes long and it features actors who will be familiar to any fan of the old B-westerns. Sidekcick Sid Saylor’s stuttering schtick gets old quickly but Johnny Mack Brown is as likable as always in Guns In The Dark and he comes across as being an authentic cowboy even when he’s not carrying a gun Given that this film features even more horse chases than the typical Johnny Mack Brown b-western, it’s good that Brown is so convincing. What isn’t convincing is how stupid Johnny Darrel is required to be in order for him to fall for Mendez’s lie in the first place. I appreciated the change of pace from Brown just using a gun to stop the bad guys but I wish the reason behind it had been more convincing. This isn’t one of Johnny Mack Brown’s more memorable westerns though, as always, it’s easy to see why he was one of the early stars of the genre.

After getting kicked out of town for shooting the place up during a night of friendly fun, cowboy Jim Waters (Johnny Mack Brown) drops in on his old friend, rancher Ed Parks (Jack Rothwell). Ed has got a strange problem. There are cattle rustlers about but instead of stealing Ed’s cattle, they’re adding cattle to Ed’s herd. It’s an obvious scheme to try to create a feud between Ed and his neighbor, rancher Hamp Harvey (Frank LaRue). Before Jim and Ed can solve the problem, Ed is gunned down. Harvey is the number one suspect but Jim figures out the truth, that Harvey has been betrayed by one of his own employees and that all of this is a part of a scheme by Sig Bostell (Tom London) to take control of both ranches.

Bar-Z Bad Man is a B-western with a notably twisty plot as Bostell plays both sides against each other for his own benefit. As usual, Johnny Mack Brown makes for a good and convincing western hero. Whether he’s chasing someone on his horse or drawing his guns, Brown is always a convincing cowboy. What makes this film interesting is that it opens with Johnny Mack Brown engaging in the type of behavior that most B-western heroes would never think of doing. Shooting up the town and then getting exiled for his actions adds an element of redemption to Jim’s efforts to get to the bottom of Bostell’s schemes. Or it would if Jim ever really seemed to feel bad about shooting the town up. His excuse is that he was just having a good time. Try to get away with that in the real old west, Jim!

Bar-Z Bad Men is a good B-western for those who like the genre. The story is solid and Johnny Mack Brown is as convincing saving the west as he was shooting it up.