West of Carson City (1940)

"Blasting wide open the toughest town of the west!"

West of Carson City remains one of the best of Johnny Mack Brown's Universal westerns. The story takes place in a gold-rush community where the locals are taken to the cleaners by duplicitious Eastern gamblers. When it becomes obvious that the local constabulary has been "bought off" by the crooks, two-fisted cattleman Jim Bannister (Brown) swings into action. The film's highlight is an outsized fistic brawl between the hero and secondary villain Breed, played by loose-limbed comic stuntman Frank Mitchell.