"The Badlands Echo With Six-Gun Action!"14 September 1950Western55 mins
Charles Starrett once more hits the trail as "The Durango Kid" in Columbia's Across the Badlands. By now, the formula was a well-oiled machine: Starrett becomes a lawman, is challenged by the local criminal element, and ultimately goes beyond the law as the masked Durango.
Federal agent Steve Lawton works undercover with his assistant, Smiley Burnette, to track down an outlaw gang that is raiding government gold shipments bound for Fort Navajo.
Filmed at the Providencia Ranch (today's Forrest Lawn in Burbank, CA), this typical "Durango Kid" Western featured the Cass County Boys performing "Go West Young Lady" by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, in addition to series regular Smiley Burnette singing his own "It's My Turn" and "The Yodeler.
It's 1873 and the disbanded Texas Rangers have been replaced by the corrupt Texas State Police. Steve Lanning arrives posing as a wanted outlaw to get in with them in his attempt to have them replaced.
Charles Starrett plays lawman Steve Forsythe in Ridin' the Outlaw Trail. Somewhere along the line, of course, Steve is obliged to don the mask of The Durango Kid, mysterious righter of wrongs.
Charles Starrett returns as the Durango Kid in Columbia's Rough, Tough, West. For most of the film, however, Starrett is known as "Steve Holden," a former Texas Ranger who comes to a wide-open mining town to visit an old friend (Jack -- later Jock -- Mahoney).
Using marked bills, Steve is looking for the supposedly dead Henry Hardison. Coming to Bonanza Town he gets a job with the town boss Crag Bozeman and gets paid with marked bills.
Popular movie trailers from 1950
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1950:
Antonio is the humble servant of a rich family governed by the Marquis Gastone. He is a young man madly in love with Lulu, but she betrays him, and he desperately enlist in the foreign legion.
The Johnny Mack Brown West of Wyoming concerns the efforts by cattle baron Simon (Stanley Andrews) to prevent the opening up of the rang to homesteaders.
Notorious stagecoach robber Rhiannon is unintentionally appointed as deputy when he saves the sheriff's life and must wear two hats between his new job that he enjoys and his old occupation that he misses.
The Durango Kid rides again in Lightning Guns. As ever, the masked Durango (alias Steve Brandon) is played by Charles Starrett, who this time around is on the trail of a gang of cold-blooded killers.
