Photographed by famed cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs just before embarking on EASY RIDER (1969), Mark of the Gun is a classic western tale of outlaws and the women they love.
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.
Gold mining cowboy western romantic melodrama (based on the story by Zane Grey) about a pair of cowboys who find a gold mine in "Thunder Mountain", but have no money to develop it. One of the cowboys rescues a girl on a stagecoach and her grateful father agrees to finance them. Along the way, she pretends to fall in love with one of the cowboys. Thinking he is about to be very rich, he sets out, but upon arrival, he finds that a bad man has stolen the claim and started a town. There, everyone turns on him, including the girl, but luckily, another pretty girl, a barmaid (who is secretly in love with him), sticks by him, and he ends up in a climactic shootout on the mountain where the gold is stashed.
To fight a poisonous weed, ranchers are burning their land. Gene is the Inspector brought in and he recommends spraying. The spraying goes well until the Larabee ranch is reached. When Larrabee refuses to allow the equipment on his land, Gene has it sprayed by airplane. Cattle must stay off recently sprayed land and when a Larrabee man shoots down the plane, the crash sends the cattle stampeding toward the newly sprayed land.
When the bank is robbed, Gene and the boys are singing nearby and the Chief arrests them as gang members but lets them go thinking they will lead them to the others.
The Utah Kid was a late entry in Monogram's "Trail Blazers" series. These low-budget westerns usually featured three cowboy stars; this time, however, there are only two, Bob Steele and Hoot Gibson. Though neither star is a spring chicken, Steele is the younger of the two, so he's the "Utah Kid" by default. The plot, involving a gang of crooks who go around fixing rodeo results, was designed to accommodate yards and yards of stock footage.
When his well-meaning sidekick (Smiley Burnette) buys a cow farm instead of a cattle ranch, singing cowpoke Gene Autry prepares to embrace the dairy business. But with a corrupt association bent on driving up milk prices, it's up to newly elected Sheriff Gene to clean up the mess. Country music icon Patsy Montana sings "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart," while radio crooners the Texas Rangers perform alongside Autry.
An elderly man leaves Wyoming to visit his daughter in a small Massachusetts town because, even though she didn't say so, he believes she needs his help. When he gets there he discovers that his daughter, a lawyer, is under great stress because of her biggest client, an old geezer who is the wealthiest and most powerful man in town. The girl's father decides to make the old man "disappear" by performing a rain dance he learned from an Indian chief back in Wyoming--and lo and behold it starts to rain and the old man does indeed disappear. The local sheriff, however, suspects foul play and arrests the girl's father.
When a farmer's wife is brutally murdered by the ruthless bandit Bobby Durango and his gang of killers, Billy Rogers goes back to his old gun and starts to hunt them one by one.
Gene takes care of three tough kids sent west from Chicago after their father died and left them a cattle ranch. They help him catch a bunch of rustlers.
When attacked by two dogs, Joe Gilmore leaves them on the desert to die. Later one of the dogs saves John Blake from drowning. Men arrive claiming the dog is killing their chickens. They want to kill the dog but John convinces them the dog's fate should be determined by a trial.