Law of the Rio Grande

An ex-outlaw learns that there are many twists and turns when you want to go straight in this action-filled tale of the Western Badlands. Gang leader "Wolf" is shot down in the act of stealing cattle. Dying from his wounds, he gets his young ward, Jim Norris, to promise to settle down to honest work. After drifting south, Jim Norris becomes a hero when he prevents the Blanco Kid from forcing himself on an innocent girl. He takes a job as a cowhand on the cattle ranch of the girl's grateful father. But his outlaw past will not remain buried now that he's made an enemy of the Blanco Kid.

With dozens of films under his gunbelt, Bob Custer fully deserves his Western star status, but even his record pales beside that of Rio Grande's "Blanco Kid," Edmund Cobb, whose amazing filmography tops 600 feature, serial and TV credits - almost two-thirds of them Westerns! One of the true legends of the genre, Cobb rode the range for over a half-century, from the early days of cinema to the 1960s in the oldtimer-packed Westerns of producers Alex Gordon and A.C. Lyles.

Wolf Hardy (Nelson McDowell), the wounded leader of an outlaw gang, takes great pains to insure that his young protégé, Phil "The Cub" Norris (Bob Custer), will return to the straight and narrow. The hot-headed Norris is almost convinced to join a gang headed by the notorious Blanco Kid (Edmund Cobb), but he is persuaded otherwise by Blanco's bride-to-be, Judy Lanning (Betty Mack). Norris rescues the pretty girl from her brutal boyfriend and is offered a job by her father (Carlton King) in gratitude. Blanco threatens to reveal the former outlaw's past, but a recovered Hardy intervenes. Two former silent screen cowboys -- Custer and Cobb -- came face-to-face in this above-average low-budget oater produced by Harry S. Webb and Flora E. Douglas for release by the redoubtable Syndicate Film Exchange, a forerunner to Poverty Row company Monogram. Nearing the end of his screen career, Custer was a bit long in the tooth to play someone's young protégé.