Bad Men of Thunder Gap (1943) User Reviews

Starved off the claims

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 11 May 2018]

This film from the PRC studio's Texas Ranger series finds Jim Newill, Dave O'Brien, and Guy Wilkerson the Cal Shrum Band as Texas Rangers on yet another undercover mission.

The town of Thunder Gap is a mining community and there has been a systematic string of robberies of food supplies for the miners. If it continues on into the winter the miners will be forced off their claims.

My problem with this western is aside from the usual shoddiness of PRC films in general that if you can't figure out who's behind all this you have to be about maybe 2 years old. Obvious the second the character is introduced.

Some forgettable cowboy ballads and a goodnatured rivalry between Newill and O'Brien over the storekeeper's niece is about the remainder of this Texas Ranger western from PRC.

Some are diamonds and some are rocks. But they still beat spaghetti.

[horn-5 · 27 November 2005]

The second of the series of 14 B-westerns produced for P.R.C. by cousins Alfred Stern and Arthur Alexander, starring Dave "Tex" O'Brien, Jim Newill and Guy Wilkerson. After 14 in this series of "Texas Rangers", Tex Ritter replaced Jim Newill and he and O'Brien and Wilkerson starred in the final eight films. O'Brien was first-billed in the series with Newill, and was knocked down to second-billing when Ritter came on board, plus he was no longer billed as Dave "Tex" O'Brien, as there was only room for one Tex, and Ritter had first claim on that name.

Texas Rangers Tex Wyatt (Dave (Tex) O'Brien)and Jim Steele (Jim Newill) arrive in Thunder Gap as undercover Rangers to investigate the hijacking of supply wagons of food for the miners. They come to town as members of a medicine-wagon troupe headed by another Ranger, Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkerson.) Ted discovers the offices of the Hard Rock Mining Company being robbed by Ed Ransom (Jack Ingram), owner of the local freight company. One of Ransom's gang slugs Tex and kills an official of the mining company. Ransom tells the townspeople he arrived at the scene too late to stop the robbery and the killing and blames Tex. Meanwhile, the latter has come to and galloped out of town.

Ransom sends two of his henchmen after Tex but he gets away and joins his two pals. Tex appears in town the next day and learns that the miners are being forced to leave town because of the food shortage and they are turning over their claims to John Hobbs (Michael Vallon), owner of the general store, for bills they owe him.

From Martha Stewart (Janet Shaw) Tex learns that Hobbs and Ransom are behind the plot to to hijack the the miner's food supplies and force them to leave Thunder Gap. The two Rangers discover the food supplies in an old mine building but are captured by Ransom's gang.

P.R.C. chopped this town to 39 minutes (minus most of the songs) in 1947 and reissued it as "Thundergap Outlaws", and the lab man doing the reissue titles didn't seem to know that the name of the the town in the original release was Thunder Gap.