Ghost Town Law

"Ghost Town Law" was part of Monogram's Rough Rider series starring Buck Jones, Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton playing undercover marshals. It is, in my opinion, one of the best of the series.

Two federal Marshals are murdered in a ghost town by an outlaw gang. Marshal Tim McCall (McCoy) is called in. He vows to avenge their deaths and calls in his partners, Buck Roberts (Jones) and Sandy "Killer" Hopkins (Hatton). The gang, headed by Ace (Tom London) and Gus (Charles King) are hiding out in an old gold mine which runs under the old town.

Heroine Josie Hall (Virginia Carpenter) arrives to find out what has happened to her brother and her aunt. She insists on going to her aunt's creepy old house with McCall where they meet Judge Crail (Murdock MacQuarrie) and Tom Cook (Howard Masters), the foreman of her aunt's ranch. Roberts arrives on the scene posing as a miner lost in the desert and feigning amnesia. He also has saddle bags full of gold. Sandy, meanwhile, has befriended an old prospector, Luke Martin (Milburn Morante).

Josie gets Luke to take her down into the mine where they are captured by Ace and the boys. As the Rough Riders close in on the bandits, they learn that they have a leader who is the brains behind them and.....................................................

This film has a little more action than most in the series. In addition to the creepy setting, there is a dandy fight between Jones and Charlie King (rare for this series). It's also unusual in that there are several cold blooded murders and references to same. As Ace says to Josie referring to her brother: "Oh he's buried out in the desert somewhere". There's the usual shooting the guns out of the outlaw's hands but the boys also appear to kill some of the bad guys. It was a mystery to me why the bad guys had to wear masks when they went up into the town. Who would recognize them in any event?

The chemistry between the three stars is what raised this trio above the other trigger trios of the day.

When two of their Marshal friends are killed, the Rough Riders are sent to investigate. They have to find the killers in a ghost town where the houses and an old mine are interconnected by secret passages and tunnels.

Ghost town, creepy house, creepy injun servant, eyes peering through the curtain, passageways and silhouette in the window - these things you find in Ghost Town law, an interesting western due to the atmosphere- there's a little sense of clarity to what's happening ( to be fair, that's down to the crackly audio and faded picture quality of the copy I had seen) but it gets better as it goes along. Has some good fights, rambunctious action and the real villain gets revealed. The set pieces - the ghost town and mansion is well done.

One of the few times in the series that all the Rough Riders don't go incognito into a story. Tim McCoy goes as he is, US Marshal.

Two of their colleagues have been killed and the center of the trouble is a ghost town. Several people besides the two marshals have been killed.and the Rough Riders are their to get to the bottom of it.

More plot than usual in this series, it's a good one for fans of Tim McCoy and Buck Jones and Raymond Hatton.

A Rough Riders film. Interesting B western that contains some haunted house elements. Well acted (Buck doesn't do quite as well as the others), decent plot involving bad guys hiding out in the ghost town of Pickwick, Nevada, sometime after 1880. Some exciting chase scenes & shoot-outs near the end. Both Tim & Buck were in their early 50s here & instead of the two of them together, the Rough Riders probably could have used a younger romantic interest to complete the usual trio formula.

I found this about as good as "B" westerns get. Buck Jones and Tim McCoy made a superb team, with Raymond Hatton as solid support. It was fun to see cowboys who really were at home on a horse. These old westerns might have been simple, but the men who made them were often from the west and it shows in all sorts of little things, from the way they handle the dialog and behave around the the ladies to the way they mount and sit a horse. Such things go beyond acting and give these vintage horse operas a flavor that later, more prestigious, films simply could not match. The plot wasted no time on side issues, and the fact that the three Rough Riders were United States Marshals doing their duty made for clean and straightforward motivation, with the villains forceful and the action fast and furious. I found it fun all the way and would highly recommend it to fans of old westerns or to anyone who might be interested in why they were once so popular.