Westward Bound (1930) / Riding Speed (1934)

Western Bound (1930, B&W): After playboy Bob Lansing gets involved in a nightclub brawl, his disgusted father sends him out west, hoping that life in the wide-open spaces will make a man of him. In Montana, the exiled Bob is mistaken for a rustler preying on local ranchers including Marge Holt, who happened to be visiting friends in the East and witnessed Bob's scrap in the nightclub. She doesn't want anything to do with young Lansing, but he insists on helping her and infiltrates the gang of cattle thieves in a dangerous bid to apprehend them.

Missouri-born Wilbert Jay Wilsey had already made a name for himself as a top rodeo performer when Poverty Row producer Lester F. Scott hired him in 1924 to star in a series of Westerns. Billed as "Buffalo Bill Jr." (even though he was no relation to the famous frontiersman William F. Cody), Wilsey starred in dozens of low budget westerns over the next ten years. Westward Bound, one of his best early talkies, teams him with silent-era serial queen Allene Ray.

Riding Speed (1934, B&W): Border patrolman Steve Funney is assigned to run down a band of human traffickers smuggling Chinese immigrants across the U.S.- Mexico line. Posing as a cowhand, Steve uses his credentials to secure a position with cattleman John Vale. Vale's foreman Bill Dirky leads the smugglers and attempts to do away with Vale and his daughter Gypsy. Steve must uncover the truth in time to save their lives.

Supposedly directed by Wilsey himself, Riding Speed was actually helmed by producer Victor Adamson, also known as Denver Dixon. Adamson, whose wife Delores Booth helped write the screenplay, turned out the sound era's cheapest Westerns; the cost of his five-reel talkies rarely exceeded $2500. Crudities abound in his films, and retakes were practically unheard of. One shot in this film shows a crew member ambling in front of the camera before the scene is completed. But these apparent imperfections are oddly endearing, and despite Adamson's parsimony,Riding Speed derives good production value from location shooting on the edge of the picturesque Mojave Desert.

• western