BONANZA TOWN (1951)

A guy in a black hat and face mask, whom we later discover is the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett), chases down and stops an out-of-control stagecoach, and its sole occupant, a tinker named Smiley (Smiley Burnette), is knocked unconscious. The Kid rides away to a cave and returns in a white hat as Steve Ramsay, an old friend of Smiley's. Steve, working in secret as a treasury agent, is headed to nearby Bonanza Town, hunting down an old nemesis, Henry Hardison, who has $30,000 in marked cash. The town is run by the corrupt Krag Boseman who controls Judge Dillon, and has Reed, the town marshal, killed just as Reed is about to arrest him. But Krag takes his orders from Hardison. The judge's son Bob, ashamed of his dad's behavior, has put out a call for help from the Durango Kid to lead a group of vigilantes trying to get rid of corruption. As Steve and Smiley head to town, we get a lengthy flashback (consisting of scenes from a previous Durango Kid movie, West of Dodge City) concerning Hardison's past deeds. Hardison was assumed drowned but he survived and Steve vows to get him and Krag Boseman as well. This is the first Durango Kid western I've seen, and I just discovered there are 64 more of them if I'm inclined to keep going. All of them feature Starrett as the Kid, whose real name was always Steve though for some reason his last name changed in every movie (Duncan, Carson, Wood, Mason, Reynolds, etc.). There was also a comic sidekick (often but not always Smiley Burnette) who did some slapstick bits and usually sang a couple of tunes. Bizarrely, this movie is part of a DVD set of classic-era Columbia musicals; despite two drawled ditties by Smiley, this is by no stretch of the imagination a musical, but a B-western. But it is a painless way to spend an hour in the old West watching the Durango Kid get his men—and surprisingly, not only is there no romance, but there are no women in the cast, except in the flashback. Starrett, getting a bit long in the tooth for a Western hero, made nine more Durango Kid films in the next year, retiring from the role and the screen in 1952. Burnette's highlight is wearing a fright wig to cover his shaved head (pictured).