Admirable film.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Probably the best actor in this generally good cast is Warner Richmond -- the brawn heavy! Taking nothing away from the others, Mr. Richmond is almost likable, for a bad guy, and shows more personality than anyone else in the cast.Then, for something else almost completely different, there is a story of, as someone titled his review, "prisoners in the desert." Not what we expect in a cowboy movie.Johnny Mack Brown was, even from his silent movie days, a likable, good-looking guy, and capable of good acting, but in "The Courageous Avenger" he is not given much need of it.He handles the action just fine, as the athlete he was, but mostly he is called upon to be brave and strong.There is a lot to like in this film, but it seems long, even at less than one hour, so maybe some tighter editing would have helped.And the stunt work was rather primitive for 1935. Yakima Canutt had not yet taught the entire movie industry how to stage a fight scene.There is some good stunt work, though, including a Yakima Canutt type of being dragged under a rolling wagon. Note: the directing here was better than, for example, the first Indiana Jones movie, where Indie was dragged under a truck, but his clothes don't get torn or even dusty. Robert N. Bradbury was, therefore, a better director than whoever did "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (whatever happened to that guy?) because you see our hero mussed and dusty."The Courageous Avenger" is probably more interesting than exciting, but it is definitely that and I certainly am glad I saw it. I recommend it to you, too, and you can see it at YouTube. Unfortunately, the print I saw is only mediocre, but still worth watching.This is added a couple days later: At least two reviews wonder why the bad guys use silver bullets, but that IS explained. It was, in fact, a perfectly good explanation by the chief bad guy.

In the 1930s and 40s, Johnny Mack Brown made a ton of B-westerns. Today, he's mostly forgotten—though he was a pretty good leading man. Why do I like him? Well, he was no pretty-boy and his performances seemed pretty natural. Unfortunately, he did not work for big studios and it's not surprising his films are neglected because they were often rather sloppily made by tiny so-called 'Poverty Row' studios. In this case, Supreme Pictures made this Brown western.The plot is very similar to many other B-westerns. Brown is an investigator sent in to look into some robberies of gold shipments. None of this is particularly new or novel. However, HOW the baddies pass on this information was kind of wacky—they use carrier pigeons to pass on the information!! Eventually, Brown gets to the bottom of it—and frees a bunch of slaves who were forced to work for the baddies (that's also pretty wacky). The bottom line is that apart from a few novel twists, this is pretty much like most of Brown's films—or the films of many other cowboy stars of the era. And, nothing to distinguish it either—especially with its rather limp ending.

It's only because I just watched "Branded a Coward" and "Courageous Avenger" back to back that I'm able to pick out a boatload of similarities between the two. Both pictures have a character named Carson, hero Johnny Mack Brown gets to kiss his sweetheart in the middle of the picture (twice in this one!), and even though he does't appear anywhere in the credits for 'CA', there's no one else I know who could have pulled off the 'under the buckboard' drag in the chase scene other than Yakima Canutt. Turns out he's listed as part of the stunt team used in some archive footage appearing in the picture.I can't tell you how many hundreds of TV and movie Westerns I've seen, but I'm at a loss to recall if there was ever a flick that foretold the use of the Lone Ranger's silver bullets like you see here. The puzzler though is why the outlaws would have used the metal to forge into bullets instead of cashing in it's value along with the gold they were stealing from the Giant Strike Mine operation. Granted, even today silver doesn't compare anywhere near the price of gold, but it's still something to think about.Along with my other observations, how many times have you seen this? In the early buckboard chase scene, the outlaws shoot the driver from behind and he goes down clutching his chest. How does that work? Also, when hero Kirk Baxter (JMB) fights villain Gorman (Warner Richmond) in the cabin, he punches Gorman on the left side of his face, but as the outlaw gets up, he's holding his right side. This stuff happens all the time and I scratch my head each and every.Well besides all the standard stuff, you also have a flurry of notes being passed back and forth by the bad guys, and a homing pigeon gimmick that must have replaced the comedic sidekick. Director Robert North Bradbury moves things along at a brisk pace, even using that 'flash forward' technique that's a staple of his Lone Star Westerns featuring John Wayne during the same era. Brown might not have been as handsome as that other young John, but he still manages to get the girl (Helen Ericson) at the end of the picture. He got to kiss her again for the third time!

Lawman Johnny Mack Brown is called in to hunt down a gang of cutthroats who rob gold shipments as they pass through the desert, murdering the escorts with silver bullets. In a bizarre twist, the baddies own a silver mine in which they force a handful of scrawny men to work as slaves!A standard-issue Saturday matinée B-western, this is straight-forward and pleasant enough entertainment for fans of the genre. Brown's always a good hero, the heavies extremely nasty, and leading lady Helen Erickson extremely good-looking!Filled with great cinematography, Courageous Avenger features some breathtaking rocky desert scenery that add to the film's atmosphere, as do the scenes of the creepy, half-crazed old men chained to a spinning wheel. They look as if they belong in a 1930's zombie movie!