Border Badmen

Billy Carson's old pal, Fuzzy Q. Jones, learns he is one of the heirs of the late Silas Stockton. The pair ride into town for the reading of his will but find Silver Creek in a state of lawlessness. The crook Merritt and his thugs have killed the sheriff and seized power. They plan to kidnap Helen Stockton, the primary heiress to the Stockton estate, and replace her with a lookalike. Billy and Fuzzy learn of the scheme and set out to rescue the girl and the Stockton family fortune.

PRC started producing their Billy The Kid series in 1940, which reinvented the famous outlaw as heroic and virtuous. Bob Steele played Billy in the first six features, and was replaced by former "Flash Gordon" Buster Crabbe in 1941. After thirteen movies, Billy's surname was changed to Carson, suggesting that PRC got cold feet about the negative historical association. Overall, Buster and his bearded sidekick Al "Fuzzy" St. John would make three dozen Billy the Kid movies for the studio in five years! Incredibly, tireless B-movie filmmaker Sam Newfield directed all 42 entries in the series. One of the most entertaining Billy the Kid films, Border Badmen features a villainous role for Arch Hall, who in the 1960s would produce a series of cult classics starring his son, B-movie teen idol Arch Hall, Jr.

BONUS: Cheyenne Frontier Days (1948): The excitement of the Old West lives again in this thrilling short subject about the annual outdoor rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

• western