Tom Monroe | Through the Shattered Lens

Before I say anything else, want to express how much I appreciate how straight-forward the title of Rustlers On Horseback is. There are horses and there are rustlers and often the rustlers do ride the horses. No lies detected.

Mistaken for being an outlaw, Marshal Rocky Lane (Allan Lane) becomes a member of a gang that’s led by Leo Straykin (Roy Barcroft). Leo has taken over the Reynolds Ranch and he’s planning on cheating a land agent out of $100,000 so that he can finance his future crimes. However, Leo isn’t working on his own and Lane and Nugget Clark (Eddy Waller) work to discover who the outlaw’s secret boss really is. (This is a low-budget, Poverty Row western so there aren’t that many possibilities.) However, Lane is not the only person working undercover. George Nader plays the son of the murdered ranch owner. Nader is looking for his own revenge.

This is a pretty standard Poverty Row western, with Lane looking convincing while riding a horse and shooting a gun. The “secret boss” makes the film a little bit more interesting than I was expecting but not that much more interesting. As is so often the case with these movies, how you react will depend on whether nor not you’re already a fan of the western genre when you watch it. If you like westerns that don’t have much filler between the chases and the gunfights, a western like this will be up your alley. If you’re not a fan of the genre, this film won’t change your mind.

This film was one of George Nader’s early roles. Nader made a handful of B-movies, including the infamous Robot Monster, before he branched into more mainstream films. Eventually, he found work in Europe and found fame as FBI Agent Jerry Cotton in a series of German films. After an accident left him sensitive to light and ended his acting career, Nader found success as a writer.

As for Allan Lane, he went on to become the voice of Mr. Ed.

With the country distracted by the Spanish-American war, someone is stealing cattle on the border between Mexico and the United States. Federal marshal Rocky Lane (Allan Lane) is sent to investigate. He gets a job with Nugget Clark (Eddy Waller), a local feed merchant, and gets to know Nugget’s daughter, Alice (Phyllis Coates). As was usually the case with these B-westerns, it turns out that the band of onery outlaws is secretly being led by a villain who is an otherwise respectable member of society. When it comes to the Old West in these films, the biggest threat was not from the outlaws but instead from the greedy and corrupt settlers who wanted to get their own piece of the action and who were willing to sell out their own neighbors and sometimes their own country to get it. It falls to Rocky and Nugget to save the day, rescue Alice from the bad guys, and recover the cattle.

This was the last of the B-westerns to star Allan Lane as Rocky Lane and Eddy Waller as his sidekick. Unfortunately, the arrival of television made short programmers like this one obsolete. Kids could now just watch westerns on television instead of spending the day down at the theater. This was not a bad western for the Rocky Lane character to go out on, though. The plot is predictable but that’s to be expected for a 53-minute programmer like this one. However, Rocky is an appropriately square-jawed hero. He rides his horse, Black Jack, with authority and he looks convincing handling a gun and throwing a punch. There are actually some good shots involving the outlaws’s hideout, which just happens to be hidden behind a waterfall. For western fans, El Paso Stampede is a watchable and undemanding genre entry.

As I mentioned earlier, this was the last film to star Allan Lane. He appeared in a few more westerns after El Paso Stampede but it was always in supporting roles. Allan Lane appeared in 88 films, the majority of which were B-westerns like this one. Today, though, Lane is best-remembered for a role for which he wasn’t even given onscreen credit, providing the voice of the talking horse, Mr. Ed.