Denny O'Moore arrives in the Texas / Mexico border town of Border City, where he wants to surprise his brother Patrick, who has been away for the past eight years claiming to be running a silver mine. But he quickly discovers that Patrick has actually been the right hand man of the notorious bandit "El Tigre", who has been waging a campaign of violence & robbery in Border City & their stronghold of the Mexican town of San Clemente. He agrees to join Texas Ranger Joe Walter in order to travel to San Clemente to apprehend El Tigre & to try to convince Patrick to return home without disgrace. But what they don't know is that Patrick's involvement with the gang runs deeper than what they initially suspected.
My Outlaw Brother is a rather poor Western made in the early 1950s, a time when the genre was getting a slight boost after war films were starting to wane following the end of the war a half decade before. At the time of the film, colour was beginning to become more common, although for budget reasons most B-grade films were still shot in black & white.
Director Elliott Nugent clearly has no flair for Westerns & treats this like a mobster flick with a little comedy element thrown in. The dreadfully daft comic relief of the main star Mickey Rooney (who still looks like a teenager despite his age) really grates on the nerves, although he does prove to be the best actor in this cast. Robert Preston makes a bland hero while Robert Stack is purely one-dimensional as the heavy in charge of the thugs, who disguises himself in an atrocious wig & dark face paint & speaks like a cheap two-bit gangster. The film is filled with some really pathetic shootouts, daftly-thought-out romances & a ridiculously easy to figure out end twist which has Robert Stack revealed as the Mexican thug El Tigre after being outsmarted by Preston. A disgrace to the Western genre & a poor waste of celluloid.
My Outlaw Brother is a rather poor Western made in the early 1950s, a time when the genre was getting a slight boost after war films were starting to wane following the end of the war a half decade before. At the time of the film, colour was beginning to become more common, although for budget reasons most B-grade films were still shot in black & white.
Director Elliott Nugent clearly has no flair for Westerns & treats this like a mobster flick with a little comedy element thrown in. The dreadfully daft comic relief of the main star Mickey Rooney (who still looks like a teenager despite his age) really grates on the nerves, although he does prove to be the best actor in this cast. Robert Preston makes a bland hero while Robert Stack is purely one-dimensional as the heavy in charge of the thugs, who disguises himself in an atrocious wig & dark face paint & speaks like a cheap two-bit gangster. The film is filled with some really pathetic shootouts, daftly-thought-out romances & a ridiculously easy to figure out end twist which has Robert Stack revealed as the Mexican thug El Tigre after being outsmarted by Preston. A disgrace to the Western genre & a poor waste of celluloid.