Range Defenders finds the Three Mesquiteers trying to defend Stoney's brother George played by future TV director Thomas Carr from a murder charge. Carr is a small rancher and he's accused of killing the owner of the Ponderosa of sheep spreads. He's on the lam (no pun intended) and looking for brother Bob Livingston and his fellow Mesquiteers Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune to help him out of the jackpot he's in.The real murderer is lawyer and perennial western villain Harry Woods who now controls the estate for Eleanor Stewart. He's also the political boss of the area with crooked sheriff Earl Hdodgins on the pad. And Hodgins is up for election and Woods is determined to have a good Chicago style election to get him back in.I always love seeing Earl Hodgins he was always playing engaging rogue types on either side of the law. Having Elmer the dummy get the better of him in a political debate was truly precious.Three Mesquiteer fans of all ages will like this.

The Three Mesquiteers was a long series of B-westerns that featured quite a few different lineups of actors playing the three do-gooders (one of which included a young John Wayne). However, and I am not exactly sure why, the lineup of Robert Livingston, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune was the one that you can most readily see today. Their films are in the public domain and the trio did quite a few of the films together. As I said, though, I am not 100% sure why these three did so many films--especially since Terhune would invariably whip out his dummy, Elmer, and begin his ventriloquism routine--something I severely doubted you'd have seen in the Old West!!! As for Livingston and Corrigan, they were competent but neither seemed to have a lot of charisma. Heck, when it comes to charisma, perhaps Elmer had the other three beat!! This edition of the series features Livingston's brother--an idiot who manages to get involved with a duel with one of the other members of the Mesquiteers in the first three minutes of the film! This is even dumber because the guy is on the run from the law and takes time to do this! Soon after Livingston arrives and gets his brother to see the folly of his ways, they learn that he is on the run because a crooked Sheriff and Mayor are both trying to convict him for a murder he did not commit. So, after helping him find a good hiding place, they go into town to investigate. What follows is actually pretty good for a Mesquiteer movie--the plot, though silly, was engaging and the side-plot where Livingston falls for the daughter of the murder victim is interesting. Even the dumb scenes with Elmer (and ALL the scenes with Elmer are dumb), they are better than normal. Not a great film, but certainly among the better Livingston/Corrigan/Terhune installments.

From Republic Pictures, "Range Defenders" is a Three Mesquiteers Western that teams up Robert Livingston, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune. When George Brooke (Thomas Carr) is framed for murder by town boss John Harvey (Harry Woods), it's up to his brother Stony (Livingston) and his buddies to clear his name and bring Harvey and his henchmen to justice. Though fairly formulaic, the film has a few unique moments to keep it interesting, along with the romantic angle provided by female lead Sylvia Ashton (Eleanor Stewart) and Stony.The good guys plan to challenge Harvey's grip on Green Valley by having Tucson Smith (Corrigan) run for sheriff against Dan Gray (Earl Hodgins). Gray's in league with Harvey, so the boys will have to work fast to prevent George from being railroaded into a noose. Tucson and Lullaby (Terhune) round up the cattle ranchers to gain their support, while Harvey's henchmen, in a burst of civic pride, vote early and often.Max Terhune provides the comic relief for the Mesquiteers; he does a clever ventriloquist routine with a dummy that puts crooked sheriff Gray on the defensive. That's in between trying to dodge a charging ram on the Ashton ranch.Pay attention during the scene when Harvey locks Sylvia in a back room of his office when the action starts to break. To escape from a window about three or four feet above her head, she climbs up on a table after breaking the window with a chair. However when she lands in the street standing erect, her head is above the lower window ledge! In true 'B' Western fashion, the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black. That's particularly relevant when George breaks out of jail and runs into the bad guys wearing light colored outfits, thereby being captured once again. Town boss Harvey must have had a dress code for his bad boys, they all wear exactly the same thing, including the light colored band around their black hats.You won't see this very often, but near the end of the story, Tucson uses a stick of dynamite to stop Harvey on horseback in his tracks as he attempts a getaway. Tucson could shoot the buttons off your shirt, and he proved just as accurate with TNT.Republic Studios made quite a few Three Mesquiteers adventures, with a whole host of cowboy stars, including Bob Steele, Tim McCoy, Tom Tyler, Ray Hatton, and believe it or not, even John Wayne following his Lone Star film days. Livingston, Corrigan and Terhune seem to have appeared in most of them as a trio, though they did trade off with others as necessary. "Range Defenders" has a unique distinction in that it's title pretty much accurately describes the story, which wasn't always the case with Westerns of the era. It breezes by pretty quickly in just under an hour, and doesn't wear out it's welcome even if it uses a tried and true formula.