This "Donald Barry Production", an ego (for Barry)/marketing tagline only devised by Producer Ron Ormond, and Ormond is the ONLY credited Producer on this film, starts off with about three minutes of newspaper headlines detailing robbery, murder and general mayhem in Missouri escapades of The Dalton Gang, backed by montage stock footage scenes, interlaced with escalating reward posters for Guthrie (Lee Roberts), Blackie (Robert Lowery) and Emmett (Greg McClure) Dalton. When next seen, Emmett is "Missouri" Ganz, Blackie is Blackie Mullett and Guthrie is just plain Mac, all working for J. J. Gorman (Ray Bennett) somewhere many miles west of Missouri in Navajo country.
The real/reel story starts when U. S. Marshal Larry West (Don Barry), sent to investigate the goings-on in Navajo country, finds a wounded cowhand named Joe (Marshall Reed) on the trail, and takes him to town. The Gorman Gang (formerly the Dalton Gang), disguised as Navajo Indians, ambushed Joe thinking he was the Marshal they had been tipped off about by gang member Ray Henderson, whose role name was not 'Delivers message'. So, West asks the none-too-bright Joe to pose as West, so that he, the real West can poke around unobserved using the name of Rusty Stevens.
This ruse only lasts about three minutes before Mac (the former Guthrie Dalton), who knows West, arrives and blows the cover. The rest is punch and counter-punch before West and town Sheriff Jeb Marvin (James Millican) join forces with the beleaguered Navajos to put an end to the Dalton Gang, now known as the Gorman Gang.
Once past the meaningless prologue, this one is heads-and-shoulders above the usual Ron Ormond-June Carr offerings, mainly because Julie Adams shows real quick she wasn't destined to remain long on Poverty Row; J. Farrell MacDonald's and Byron Foulger's performances, and the excellent camera work by the under-rated Ernest Miller who, for a change of pattern on Ormond productions, was given a chance to employ many set-ups on various scenes, including lots of close-ups, even in the action scenes.
Walter Greene's music is his usual bass-thumping mess, which still makes it better than what some guy named Barber tossed in on some of the revisionist-version tapes on John Wayne's Lone Star westerns.
The real/reel story starts when U. S. Marshal Larry West (Don Barry), sent to investigate the goings-on in Navajo country, finds a wounded cowhand named Joe (Marshall Reed) on the trail, and takes him to town. The Gorman Gang (formerly the Dalton Gang), disguised as Navajo Indians, ambushed Joe thinking he was the Marshal they had been tipped off about by gang member Ray Henderson, whose role name was not 'Delivers message'. So, West asks the none-too-bright Joe to pose as West, so that he, the real West can poke around unobserved using the name of Rusty Stevens.
This ruse only lasts about three minutes before Mac (the former Guthrie Dalton), who knows West, arrives and blows the cover. The rest is punch and counter-punch before West and town Sheriff Jeb Marvin (James Millican) join forces with the beleaguered Navajos to put an end to the Dalton Gang, now known as the Gorman Gang.
Once past the meaningless prologue, this one is heads-and-shoulders above the usual Ron Ormond-June Carr offerings, mainly because Julie Adams shows real quick she wasn't destined to remain long on Poverty Row; J. Farrell MacDonald's and Byron Foulger's performances, and the excellent camera work by the under-rated Ernest Miller who, for a change of pattern on Ormond productions, was given a chance to employ many set-ups on various scenes, including lots of close-ups, even in the action scenes.
Walter Greene's music is his usual bass-thumping mess, which still makes it better than what some guy named Barber tossed in on some of the revisionist-version tapes on John Wayne's Lone Star westerns.