Just perfect...

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Lawless Land casts Johnny Mack Brown as a Texas Ranger who upon arriving in town hears that the sheriff has been killed only minutes earlier. As it was the sheriff Brown had come to see, he decides to stay awhile and see what's going on.From the gitgo it's rather obvious that the town's leading citizen is responsible not only for the sheriff's murder, but a couple of others besides. Ted Adams is a villain in the grand tradition of Snidely Whiplash. If he had only let his mustache grow out into a handlebar he could have twirled them, let out a cackling laugh, and everyone would know.Everyone has to know because this film was meant for the juvenile trade so you could not be subtle. When anything is subtle in one of these B picture horse operas, it's a rarity indeed.All this on Adams part mind you because also in the grand tradition of those Victorian/Edwardian melodramas, Adams has designs on Little Nell in the form of Louise Stanley.Both Brown and Adams can't get any good help, Brown enlists storekeeper Horace Murphy in his service and Adams chief henchman is Julian Rivero who can't do anything right. Rivero bungles one job after another for Adams usually in a way that provokes a lot of laughs.I found Lawless Land to be thoroughly enjoyable taken on its own terms. I think it will still be viewing pleasure.

This is not a terrible film, but it certainly doesn't elevate itself above the plethora of B-westerns made in the 1930s-50s. A bazillion such movies were made and this Johnny Mack Brown movie just didn't do much to distinguish itself.The movie begins with a HUGE cliché. The Sheriff is set to announce the identity of some upstanding citizen who is in fact the leader of some baddies. The problem is that you KNOW that this means the Sheriff will die before he announces the leader's identity--and so when he dies you are bound to have a sense of déjà vu! And so it's up to the lawman, Brown, to investigate. However, when he DOES identify the guy (and it's obvious who it is to the viewers), many in the town, inexplicably, gang up on Brown--who is a US Marshall!! This makes no sense, but neither does the character Ortego--the world's worst henchman. Why the boss would trust this idiot is beyond me. What is also beyond me is how quickly Brown's girl turns on him--and then later turns to him!! Her fickleness is baffling--and the ending just made my head hurt!!! Overall, it's a very ordinary sort of film with a somewhat charismatic leading man and lots of plot difficulties. See it if you want, but there are certainly many better B-westerns out there waiting to be seen.

This seems to have been made as a matinée feature in the day. But it still holds up after all these years. Some of the acting is a bit bad, but some is pleasantly good. Very few stereotypical characters in this western, not very common for the genre and the time. Some very memorable lines, and delivery of those lines. I am by no stretch of the imagination a film scholar, so I don't know if the notable dialog in this film was borrowed from earlier work. My point? Much of the dialog in this movie can be recognized in many a well known movie that came later, including recent releases, and not just in westerns. If you come across this one, and enjoy a good story set to a western backdrop, you won't regret watching it.