The Cowboy from Sundown

Cowboy From Sundown casts Tex Ritter as a local sheriff with some disagreeable duty to perform. He's got to quarantine various herds of cattle for hoof and mouth disease and the ranchers are already facing drought. Which is just great for banker George Pembroke, his bottom feeding son Carleton Young and their lawyer Tristram Coffin. These guys are looking to pick up ranches at a fire sale rate and they've even used their influences to prevent the ranchers from getting government loans to help them over the rough patch.

Not only that Young is making a move on Pauline Haddon who fancies Sheriff Ritter instead, but she's a cattle rancher also. In fact except for Deputy Roscoe Ates, Tex is pretty friendless through most of this film.

Monogram would have been better to put this in a modern west setting. Back in the day there were no agencies giving out government loans, but during the New Deal there certainly were. It's a major flaw in a film that was tailor made for the New Deal times.

Still it's an OK B western that I'm sure found an audience in 1940 with a plot that resonated the present.