Brand of the Devil (1944) Dave O'Brien, James Newill, Guy Wilkerson, Ellen Hall, I. Stanford Jolley Movie Review

Brand of the Devil (1944)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Brand of the Devil (1944)

Oh Well

When Molly Dawson (Ellen Hall) took over the ranch she also took on a lot of trouble as she finds first her cattle is rustled and then her horses are stolen with the band of outlaws known as the Devil's Brand gang being behind it. Having telegraphed for help Texas Rangers Jim Steele, Tex Wyatt and Panhandle Perkins show up under cover to try and get to the bottom of things. It doesn't take long for the trio to work out that Jack Varno (I. Stanford Jolley) is behind all the trouble but find their arrival causing suspicion between the outlaws about the strangers in town.

A quick run down of things you can find in many an hour long western from the 1940s. There will be the old rancher dealing with local trouble; the old rancher usually has an attractive daughter, grand daughter or niece. Then we have the good guys who arrive under cover to try and get to the bottom of things, not only at one point will their cover be blown but they will probably break out in to a song as well. I could go on because so many of these old westerns were built around these and a few other cliches and to be frank "Brand of the Devil" is no different what so ever.

With that said I will give you about the only reason there is for maybe watching "Brand of the Devil" and that is it was the penultimate appearance of Dave O'Brien as Tex Wyatt in a Texas Rangers movie. It isn't much of a reason but everything else in this old western can be seen in a variety of other westerns including one person masquerading as a woman and ending up being caught.

What this all boils down to is that "Brand of the Devil" is as routine as they come when it comes to these old one hour Texas ranger westerns and whilst there isn't anything really bad about this one there is nothing to make it stand out from the crowd either.


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