Like 1940's Melody Ranch, the 1941 Gene Autry vehicle Down Mexico Way was designed as a "special", to be promoted separately from Autry's regular B-western series as an A-picture attraction. The story gets under way when a pair of con artists, Gibson (Sidney Blackmer) and Allen (Joe Sawyer), breeze into the town of Sage City claiming to be movie producers. The two scoundrels promise to film a movie in the little burg on the condition that the townsfolk pony up the necessary production fees.
Rodeo champ Gene Autry inherits half interest in both a ranch and a mine that provides steady employment for the surrounding rancheros. Unfortunately, the other half goes to Easterner Barbara Erwin (Carol Hughes), who is only interested in monetary remuneration. To convince Gene to buy her share, Barbara enters into an unholy alliance with unscrupulous attorneys Arnold (Ivan Miller) and Fry (Sam Flint), who, without their client's consent, hire a gang of thugs headed by Tommick (John Merton). When a ranchero (Elias Gamboa) is mortally wounded in the ensuing gun battle, Barbara sees the error of her way and switches sides.
The conflict between a railroader and a stage line owner is being aggravated by bad guys who are sabotaging both sides. Roy and Gabby mediate the conflict and expose the bad guys.
The mayor has sent for a gunslinger who, though appearing to clean up the town, is really to be the mayor's means of taking the town over. When Roy and Gabby arrive in Tombstone, Roy is mistaken for the gunslinger. Just as Roy is ready to expose the mayor, the real gunslinger shows up.
Gene returns from the East with new ranch owner Tom Bennett to find everyone's cattle dying. Blaine has reopened the copper mine and the waste is poisoning the water supply. While Gene is away Tom confronts the miners and a man is killed in the ensuing gunfight. Now Gene not only has the dying cattle problem but his ranch owner is in jail.
The fifth film in the 24-film Range Busters series finds "Crash", "Dusty" and Alibi, on their way to Gopher City to become the town's peace officers. In the saloon, young Jimmy Rowell is losing money in a crooked poker game to saloon owner Bob Harmon. Harmon and his henchman Bart Gill are in reality wanted-outlaw brothers Jim and Ike Breedon seeking revenge against Jimmy and his school-teaching sister Sally as their father, a circuit judge in Nebraska, had sentenced their brother Bud to be hanged. Harmon involves Jimmy, because of his gambling debts, in a robbery of a rancher known to keep large amounts of money at his ranch. The Range Busters break up the robbery, Bart is killed, as is Rancher Fleming, and Jimmy is wounded but escapes. Harmon, setting a trap for Crash, tricks Sally and Jimmy to his hideout, and Crash follows them.
When the showboat hits town, two men use the parade as a distraction to rob the bank. Their accomplice is Pop, the clown from the showboat. He leaves the money on the boat and tells his daughter Patsy to bring it to him at a later stop on the river. Gene's investigation of a bank robbery takes him to the showboat where he becomes a performer. Gene and Frog try to find the money while helping Patsy and her father.
Bill Hickok, assisted by Calamity Jane, is after a foreign agent and his guerrilla band who are trying to take over some western territory just as the Civil War is coming to a close.
Drifter Cole Harden is accused of stealing a horse and faces hanging by self-appointed Judge Roy Bean, but Harden manages to talk his way out of it by claiming to be a friend of stage star Lillie Langtry, with whom the judge is obsessed, even though he has never met her. Tensions rise when Harden comes to the defense of a group of struggling homesteaders who Judge Bean is trying to drive away.
While Sam Houston in in the nation's capital trying to get Texas into the Union, his aide is trying to impose a self-serving tax on the use of the Santa Fe trail. The lady owner of a wagon train is using the trail, and a Texas Ranger comes to her assistance.
Hoppy and Lucky have been called in to investigate a series of stage holdups. The robbers are taking gold from Colby's mine and Hoppy suspects it may be ex-outlaw Colby himself. When Speedy strikes gold, Hoppy borrows it and announces a gold shipment hoping to catch the gang and their leader.
Gene Autry and sidekick Frog Millhouse depart Madison Square Garden and NYC heading west for home in their car and a horse trailer carrying Gene's horse, Champion. They discover that Ronnie Willoughby, a young boy just off the boat from school in England, has hitched a ride, thinking that Gene and Frog were sent by his father to meet him. Ronnie thinks his father is a big rancher in the west and doesn't know that his father, Alfred Willoughby, is serving time in San Quentin prison because of a frame-up by the officials of a packing company. To keep the father from testifying against them, the packing company officials, Carter, Jenkins and Martin, have arranged for the boy to be kidnapped. Along the way a runaway bride, Joyce Halloway, and her young sister Patsy join the troupe.
Days of Jesse James is a 1939 American film directed by Joseph Kane and starring Roy Rogers. Bank robbery pulled off by the bank officials, not the usual James gang.