

A "special" by Monogram standards, Lure of the Wasteland was lensed in a not inexpensive process called Telco-color. Grant Withers takes a break from his duties in the "Mister Wong" series to play Smitty, a US marshal assigned to track down $250,000 in stolen bonds.
Judge Carlton

A "special" by Monogram standards, Lure of the Wasteland was lensed in a not inexpensive process called Telco-color. Grant Withers takes a break from his duties in the "Mister Wong" series to play Smitty, a US marshal assigned to track down $250,000 in stolen bonds.
1939-03-18
7
Photographed in natural COLOR by Francis Corby
6.7One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?
6.6Jake Wade breaks Clint Hollister out of jail to pay off an old debt, though it's clear there is some pretty deep hostility between them. They part, and Jake returns to his small-town marshal's job and his fiancée only to find he has been tracked there by Hollister. It seems they were once in a gang together and Jake knows where the proceeds of a bank hold-up are hidden. Hollister and his sidekicks make off into the hills, taking along the trussed-up marshal and his kidnapped bride-to-be to force the lawman to show them where the loot is.
6.9In this epic Western, Wade Hatton, a wagon master turned sheriff, tames a cow town at the end of a railroad line.
7.1Drifter 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.
6.8An ex-convict drifter and his flawed young partner are made sheriff and deputy of a Western town.
6.8At a Mexican ranch, fugitive O'Malley and pursuing Sheriff Stribling agree to help rancher Breckenridge drive his herd into Texas where Stribling could legally arrest O'Malley, but Breckenridge's wife complicates things.
6.5A cattle-vs.-sheepman feud loses Connie Dickason her fiance, but gains her his ranch, which she determines to run alone in opposition to Frank Ivey, "boss" of the valley, whom her father Ben wanted her to marry. She hires recovering alcoholic Dave Nash as foreman and a crew of Ivey's enemies. Ivey fights back with violence and destruction, but Dave is determined to counter him legally... a feeling not shared by his associates. Connie's boast that, as a woman, she doesn't need guns proves justified, but plenty of gunplay results.
6.1A wagon train heads for Denver with a cargo of whisky for the miners. Chaos ensues as the Temperance League, the US cavalry, the miners and the local Indians all try to take control of the valuable cargo.
6.7At a desolate relay station in the west, a stagecoach attendant and a stranded woman traveller are held captive by a band of escaped convicts.
6.5Embezzler, shill, all around confidence man S. Quentin Quale is heading west to find his fortune; he meets the crafty but simple brothers Joseph and Rusty Panello in a train station, where they steal all his money. They're heading west, too, because they've heard you can just pick the gold off the ground. Once there, they befriend an old miner named Dan Wilson whose property, Dead Man's Gulch, has no gold. They loan him their last ten dollars so he can go start life anew, and for collateral, he gives them the deed to the Gulch. Unbeknownst to Wilson, the son of his longtime rival, Terry Turner (who's also in love with his daughter, Eva), has contacted the railroad to arrange for them to build through the land, making the old man rich and hopefully resolving the feud. But the evil Red Baxter, owner of a saloon, tricks the boys out of the deed, and it's up to them - as well as Quale, who naturally finds his way out west anyway - to save the day.
7.3The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy on a mission of 'justice', which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, 'Rooster' Cogburn because he has 'true grit', and a reputation of getting the job done.
6.6When a handful of settlers survive an Apache attack on their wagon train they must put their lives into the hands of Comanche Todd, a white man who has lived with the Comanches most of his life and is wanted for the murder of three men.
6.6Jim Douglass arrives in the small town of Rio Arriba in order to witness the hanging of the four men he believes murdered his wife. When the convicts escape, Jim tracks them into Mexico, determined to see that justice is done. But the farther Jim goes in his quest for vengeance, the more merciless he becomes, losing himself in an unrelenting spiral of hatred and violence.
6.6Heading east to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher for his frontier town home, Link Jones is stranded with singer Billie Ellis and gambler Sam Beasley when their train is held up. For shelter, Jones leads them to his nearby former home, where he was brought up an outlaw. Finding the gang still living in the shack, Jones pretends to be ready to return to a life crime.
6.6During the war for Texas independence, one man leaves the Alamo before the end (chosen by lot to help others' families) but is too late to accomplish his mission, and is branded a coward. Since he cannot now expose a gang of turncoats, he infiltrates them instead. Can he save a wagon train of refugees from Wade's Guerillas?
5.9John Breen (John Wayne), a Kentucky militiaman falls in love with French exile Fleurette De Marchand (Vera Ralston). He discovers a plot to steal the land that Fleurette's exiles plan to settle on and aims to foil it.
6.7In 1850s Oregon, a businessman is torn between his love of two very different women and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line.
5.9While moving a group of Apaches to a Native American reservation in Arizona, an American scout named Sam Varner is surprised to find a white woman, Sarah Carver, living with the tribe. When Sam learns that she was taken captive by an Indian named Salvaje ten years ago, he attempts to escort Sarah and her half-Native American son to his home in New Mexico. However, it soon becomes clear that Salvaje is hot on their trail.
6.7Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as Comancheros.
6.6At the height of the frontier era, a train races through the Rocky Mountains on a classified mission to a remote army post. But one by one the passengers are being murdered, and their only hope is the mysterious John Deakin, who's being transported to face trial for murder.
5.2The Dalton gang escape to a nearby town after a train robbery goes south, but they are met by a coven of witches with sinister plans for the unsuspecting outlaws.
7.6As the west rapidly becomes civilized, a pair of outlaws in 1890s Wyoming find themselves pursued by a posse and decide to flee to South America in hopes of evading the law.
7.0After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.
5.1Sam Longwood, a frontiersman who has seen better days, spies the gold-mine partner, Jack Colby, who ran off with all the gold from a mine they were prospecting fifteen years earlier. He tells his other partners from that time, Joe Knox and Billy, and they confront Colby demanding not only the thousand dollars he took but an addition fifty-nine thousand for their trouble. After being thwarted in this attempt, they, and a would-be named Thursday, hatch a plan to kidnap Colby's wife, Nancy Sue, who is coincidently Sam's old flame, but find that Nancy Sue is not the sweet girl that Sam remembers.
6.1The Texas Rangers chase down a gang of outlaws led by Butch Cavendish, but the gang ambushes the Rangers, seemingly killing them all. One survivor is found, however, by an American Indian named Tonto, who nurses him back to health. The Ranger, donning a mask and riding a white stallion named Silver, teams up with Tonto to bring the unscrupulous gang and others of that ilk to justice.
6.1Audie Murphy comes into his own as a Western star in this story. Wrongly accused by crooked railroad officials of aiding a train heist by his old friends the Daltons, he joins their gang and becomes an active participant in other robberies. Betrayed by a fellow gang member, Murphy becomes a fugitive in the end. Seeking refuge at the ranch of a reformed gang member, he hopes to flee with the man's daughter to South America, but he's captured in the end and led off to jail. The girl promises to wait.
6.7What happens when a glamorous express, with high government officials, wealthy merchants, concubines and a gang of brigands on board, speeds towards the small town of Hanshui, where escaping bank robbers, corrupt officials, and gamblers await? Well, let's just say the Titanic had a smoother maiden voyage.
6.5Arms dealer Yolaf Peterson aims to make a sale to guerilla Mongo, but the money is locked in a bank safe, the combination known only to Professor Xantos, a prisoner of the Americans. Yolaf agrees to free Xantos, accompanied by reluctant guerilla Basco, but a former business partner of Yolaf's- John 'The Wooden Hand', has other ideas.
5.9This Western adventure, inspired by Kenny Rogers' hit song, tells how fictional gambler Brady Hawkes, going in search of a young son he never knew he had, teams up with an impetuous young admirer and a shady lady on his journey, which also involves him with an arrogant railroad owner and a gang of villains.
7.0After escaping from jail, outlaw Wes McQueen is convinced by his old partner in crime to do one last heist.
6.4Chicago hotel clerk Frank Harris dreams of life as a cowboy, and he gets his chance when, jilted by the father of the woman he loves, he joins Tom Reece and his cattle-driving outfit. Soon, though, the tenderfoot finds out life on the range is neither what he expected nor what he's been looking for...
8.5A Mexican bandit is about to be executed in the United States, so his brother takes over a train and holds the passengers as hostages unless his brother is released. Now both the Americans and Mexicans are baffled as to what to do. One of the passengers — who wrote the letter for their captor — has a suggestion: call mercenaries Hank Brackett and Johnny Reech. They do, and as expected they do come up with a plan, but the president of the railroad is not sure if it will work.
5.7Daniel Bone is aiming for success. A Brooklyn gunsmith by trade, he figures the place to be is where the guns are. So off he goes into the West and becomes the foe of the notorious Pecos Kid, the captive of Paiutes, the target in a saloon showdown, and the lone source of the whereabouts of a fabulous gold strike.
6.9Old West highwayman Bill Miner, known to Pinkertons as "The Gentleman Bandit," is released in 1901 after 33 years in prison. A genial and charming old man, he re-enters a world unfamiliar to him, and returns to the only thing that gives him purpose — robbery.
6.5When vigilante land baron David Braxton hangs one of the best friends of cattle rustler Tom Logan, Logan's gang decides to get even by purchasing a small farm next to Braxton's ranch. From there the rustlers begin stealing horses, using the farm as a front for their operation. Determined to stop the thefts at any cost, Braxton retains the services of eccentric sharpshooter Robert E. Lee Clayton, who begins ruthlessly taking down Logan's gang.
6.3During the Civil War, a Union spy, Andrews, is asked to lead a band of Union soldiers into the South so that they could destroy the railway system. However, things don't go as planned when the conductor of the train that they stole is on to them and is doing everything he can to stop them. Based on a true story.
6.5After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.
8.0Rex, Slim and the boys are fired by a wealthy rancher but decide to help him out when his daughter intends on marrying a shifty, gold-digging actor. Meanwhile, the rancher's foreman executes plans for a train robbery.
5.7American arms dealer Kennedy hopes to make a killing by selling to the "regulares" in the 1916 Mexican revolution. American mercenary Wilson favors the rebel faction headed by Escobar, and they plot to hijack Kennedy's arms; but Wilson also has his eye on Kennedy's wife. Raids, counter-raids, and escapes follow in a veritable hail of bullets.