Please don't spend money on this.

hyped garbage

The acting in this movie is really good.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Cowboy hero Johnny Mack Brown starred in over 200 B-movie westerns during his 38-year career in Hollywood. "Branded A Coward" ranks as one of Brown's better oaters. As Johnny Hume, he plays a cowboy who is a crack shot unless somebody else is slinging lead at him. Initially, "Thundering Gun Slingers" director Sam Neufeld's horse opera opens with a family in a covered wagon setting up camp in the wilderness when a gang of ruthless outlaws open fire on them. Johnny watches as his mother and father die from gunfire. Johnny's little brother takes a slug in the shoulder, and Johnny is so frightened that he appropriates a revolver and conceals himself in the brush while the outlaws check the bodies and gallop away. From then on, poor Johnny refuses to get tangled up in a gunfight. After he wins a rodeo championship, Johnny his celebrating his triumph in a saloon when three ruffians brandish their six-guns and try to hold up the bartender. During the confrontation, the bartender shoots one of the outlaws, but he dies at the hands of another outlaw. Meantime, Johnny cowers behind the bar in abject terror. You can see his hand trembling while the robbery occurs. He flashbacks to the past when the desperadoes killed his parents. "I'm just gun shy when guns are needed," he summarizes his predicament. "I've been thinking I would get over it, but I never will. Just when I begin to get the nerve to do something, a picture what happened on that terrible night when I was a kid pops up before me. I guess most people would call it yellow." When the truth comes out about his cowardice, Johnny leaves town. As his sidekick and he are riding to another town where nobody will know about his cowardice, he intervenes in a stagecoach hold-up. When he arrives, Johnny finds the driver wounded and the shotgun rider dead. Fearlessly, Johnny draws his six-shooter and sends the outlaws packing. Whatever cowardice that he felt before, Johnny no longer feels again. The outlaws try to steal the wagon with a passenger, Ethel Carson (Billie Seward of "Twentieth Century"), inside, but Johnny thwarts them. At one point, he leaps astride the team of horses to slow them, then drops beneath the entire coach, climbs up from the back atop the vehicle from the rear, and commandeers the coach from the road agents. Incidentally, stunt man Yakima Canutt performed this audacious stunt later in John Ford's classic western "Stagecoach" with John Wayne.Johnny's stuttering sidekick Oscar (Sid Saylor of "Six Gun Man") spreads the word around the town of Lawless that Johnny is an ideal candidate for the post of town marshal. He conjures up tall tales that Johnny dealt with both Billy the Kid and Black Bart. Johnny doesn't want to take the job despite the encouragement that he receives from the town citizens. Nevertheless, Johnny doesn't trust him. He suspects that he may turn yellow again. No sooner than this happens, Johnny gets a warning from the chief villain, nicknamed the Cat, who vows to kill him because he killed his friends. Nobody knows what the Cat looks like. All they know is the Cat is "a cruel ruthless killer."Meanwhile, Ethel's father Joe (Lloyd Ingraham of "Our Daily Bread") takes an immediate disliking to Johnny when he catches a glimpse of his six-gun with the initials T.H. on it as well as four notches. As it turns out, Johnny's father killed Carson's brother. Joe argues that Johnny's father took advantage of his position as a lawman to kill his brother. Johnny learns about an anonymous villain known only as 'the Cat' and he resolves to hunt the man down that killed his mother and father. Later, Joe challenges Johnny to a duel in the street. Johnny tries to shoot the revolver out of Joe's hand, but some desperadoes in the saloon shoot out the window and hit old Joe in the heart and kill him. Predictably, Ethel turns against him."Branded A Coward' is an unusual sagebrusher because our hero's amiable sidekick bites the dust.

"Branded a Coward" has one of the classic B Western story lines - a young boy sees his parents killed by outlaws and one day comes back to avenge the innocent. The minor twist here is that Johnny Hume (Johnny Mack Brown) really didn't plan it that way, but as one thing leads to another, well, you know.Sometimes you have to consider the era when these old time oaters were made. For 1935 this one wasn't all that bad. The leap of faith needed here is how quickly Johnny makes the transition from a 'cowering behind the bar' onlooker to full fledged Western hero when he throws down with the outlaws attacking the stagecoach in the first half. That scene offers the equally classic 'under the stagecoach' maneuver that became a trademark of many films in which Yakima Canutt appeared. Yak portrays gang leader 'Cat' as the story opens, but as things progress, hints are dropped that a new Cat mysteriously appears to take over the gang whenever it's thought the one prior has been compromised.I've only seen Syd Saylor a couple of times before and I don't recall him ever doing the stuttering gimmick. It wears after a while, but it's still a downer when he gets knocked off before the picture ends. All the while he tried getting his words out I kept thinking Porky Pig in those old Warner Brothers cartoons, and had to consider whether Saylor's bit had anything to do to inspire that character.Well you had to wonder if the finale wasn't just a bit too contrived. With the appearance of Johnny's older brother Billy, who also witnessed the death of their parents, an explanation of how he became the new 'Cat' would have been in order. Instead, you just had to take the twist ending on faith that the good brother would come out on top. But Johnny getting the girl (Billie Seward) at the end of the story - that was just par for the course.

Johnny Mack Brown is the one that is Branded A Coward in this B western produced by a Poverty Row studio called Supreme Pictures. It's not really his fault, he sustained a great emotional trauma as a child, seeing his family massacred by an outlaw only known as 'The Cat'. When he grew up he became a trick shot artist, but when it comes to gunplay with targets that shoot back, Brown can't forget.But when he and sidekick Syd Saylor spot a stagecoach holdup they take a hand in and save the gold shipment and Billie Seward. A grateful town makes him their marshal which Brown decides to accept after he hears that it was the Cat's gang that did the robbery and is operating in that area.This is one unusual B western in that it breaks one parameter of a B western which I will not tell and it has a surprise ending as to who the identity of the mysterious Cat is. I'd check this Johnny Mack Brown western out.

The title, "Branded a Coward" more or less sets the tone for this unusual Johnny Mack Brown series western. Produced by Poverty Row's Supreme Pictures and directed by Sam Newfield, this entry departs from the normal series western and cowboy hero.In the opening, Johnny Hume's (Brown) family is murdered by Yakima Canutt and his gang as Johnny hides in the bushes. Fast forward 20 years and we find Johnny as a sharp shootin', hard ridin' rodeo cowboy. But he has a reputation of shying away when the real gunplay starts. In fact during a saloon robbery, Johnny is seen cowering beside the bar unable to take a hand in confronting the outlaws.Johnny decides to move on. Soon he is joined by his sidekick Oscar (Syd Saylor). They come upon a stagecoach robbery and Johnny finally finds his courage and drives the outlaws away while killing several of them. Inside the coach is heroine Ethel Carson (Billie Seward) to whom Johnny takes a fancy. Ethel's father Joe Carson (Lloyd Ingraham) claims Johnny's father gunned down his brother and thus forbids Johnny to see his daughter.Johnny discovers that the gang that murdered his family headed by an outlaw known only as "The Cat" is operating in the area. Carson, who has a drinking problem, discloses to the outlaws that a shipment of gold is expected. In the meantime he goes gunning for Johnny and is shot accidentally by an outlaw and Johnny is blamed.Johnny vows to prove his innocence. "The Cat" attempts to lure Johnny into a trap and..........As I have mentioned, this picture has an unusual number of twists for a Poverty Row quickie, namely:1) The hero is shown as an actual coward;2) The comedic sidekick is murdered;3) The hero actually gets to kiss the girl...twice;4) An unexpected surprise ending.Johnny Mack Brown had a shot at major stardom with M-G-M in the late twenties. He even appeared with Greta Garbo. After 1930's "Billy the Kid" he drifted into "B" movies and serials eventually turning that into a lucrative twenty year career.The inclusion of Yakima Canutt in the cast ensured some top flight stunt work. He performs his signature "falling from the team of horses under the stagecoach and up the back of the coach" stunt and does a dangerous looking high dive off of a cliff, as well. He can also be visibly seen doubling one of the actors in the climatic fist fight.A different and enjoyable series western.