Abilene Town (DVD)

Located where the Chisholm Trail ends, Abilene is a bustling cow town largely supported by Texas cattlemen driving their herds to market. Marshal Dan Mitchell, finding it increasingly difficult to keep rowdy cowboys from running roughshod over peaceful homesteaders, tries unsuccessfully to enlist the aid of lackadaisical county Sheriff Bravo Trimble. He will need help keeping the peace when, incensed by barb-wire barricades set up by the homesteaders, brutish Cap Ryder and his trigger-happy gunmen are provoked to violence.

Randolph Scott, a college-educated Virginia gentleman who took up motion-picture acting as a lark, found himself typed as a Western leading man in the early 1930s and became a genre icon. Abilene Town, an enjoyable starring vehicle from the middle period of his career, exploits familiar situations quite effectively, thanks to above-average scripting, directing, and acting. Top marks in the latter department go not only to Scott but also to cast members Ann Dvorak, playing a tough-talking saloon girl, and Rhonda Fleming, as the shopkeeper's daughter who captures the marshal's heart. - Ed Hulse

• western