Flame of the West

Johnny Mack Brown is an ex-gunslinger-turned-doctor in a wide open town in this randomly-named western.

With a situation like that, you know from the git-go that it's going to end with him strapping on his old revolvers and taking out the bad guys, but director Lambert Hillyer -- long past his halcyon days directing William S. Hart -- runs this Destry-like plot entirely in a low key and with some surprising casting.

It is perennial screen villain Douglas Dumbrille who's the tough lawman who is hired to clean up the town, and he goes about it in a quiet, efficient manner. He has circuitous conversations with Brown about Joan Woodbury, the saloon singer with a heart of gold, about whom Dumbrille says "Did you ever know a woman you wanted to kill one minute and kiss the next?" All in all, it's a startlingly fine B western from Monogram.