Flame of the West has always attracted more attention than most of Johnny Mack Brown's Monogram westerns, if for no other reason than the offbeat casting of Douglass Dumbrille. Usually seen in villainous roles, Dumbrille herein offers a sincere, effective performance as a scrupulously honest US marshal named Nightlander. When he takes on a gang of crooked gamblers, Nightlander is shot down in cold blood, compelling frontier doctor John Poole (Johnny Mack Brown) to put his Hippocratic oath on the back burner and strap on the shootin' irons.
Jimmy Wakely and Dusty, traveling with the medicine show owned by "Lasses" White, stop at the Ferguson ranch and find the rancher and his wife killed. They take the Ferguson baby to their camp, where outlaws Joe, Slick and Pete attempt to kidnap the baby, while Dusty is reporting the murders to Sheriff Beasley and town mayor Melinda Pringle. Wakely and his singers hide the baby from its legal guardian, Doc Judd Thomas, as they suspect him of being connected with the Ferguson murders.
After years in prison, a gang of criminals are deported from Bavaria and arrive as free immigrants to America. They kill an Indian by accident and do different jobs such as cleaning latrines, until they get installed in an abandoned house next to an Indian woman. One day someone will propose to perpetrate a robbery ...
Pretty Nan Morgan is admired by all the boys in Lariat and likes them, every one, but her heart belongs to Broncho Billy, who proudly announces to the boys one day that he wants to introduce them "to the future Mrs. Broncho." Matters glide along smoothly until about the time Broncho is thinking of putting the ring on Nan's finger.
Insurance Investigator Roy is looking for Weston and the missing money he supposedly obtained in a robbery. When he catches him and listens to his story, he changes his mind about him. A freak accident locates the missing money box and they find the seal unbroken. Roy then announces the box will be opened at the showboat that evening.
After planning to only rob a gold mine, an outlaw and his two sons end up killing all of the miners. While fleeing to Canada, they stop at a small cabin in the woods where they find a woman and her stepdaughter living together. What happens afterward is told through the memories of the step-daughter, now a patient locked away in a mental hospital.
After a payroll robbery the Mesquiteers catch up with the gang. But the members escape, the gang leader is killed, and they end up with only the leaders young son who is quickly sent to a work farm. They adopt the boy hoping to learn where the money is. Just as their kindness is about to pay off a gang member takes the boy away forcing him to retrieve the money. - Written by Maurice VanAuken
Returning from World War I, Glenn Kilbourne travels to Arizona to regain his health. He meets a local girl, Flo Hutler, who helps him recover. His fiancee, Carley Burch, follows him to Arizona but soon decides she'd rather go back to New York. When Flo is badly hurt in an accident, Glenn decides to repay her for her help in bringing him back to health by proposing marriage.
Author Bret Harte relates the story of the discovery of gold in California at Sutter's Mill, and how that discovery changed the history of the west forever.
Chief Standing Rock's tribe has a treaty protecting their fishing grounds, but a canning corporation is violating the treaty through intimidation and force. The tribe is divided as to how to handle the threat. Standing Rock's son, Braveheart, is sent to college to study law so that he can protect their rights, but others in the tribe, led by the hot-tempered Ki-Yote, want to provoke a more violent confrontation.
Serials usually spawned feature film versions, but with this film, it was the other way around. A 1932 Buck Jones Western, White Eagle was made into a serial nine years later, again starring Jones in the title role, a (supposedly) Native American Pony Express Rider defending his people against a gang of evil Whites.
Molly O'Day and her brother, Josh, are homesteading on and trying to make a living on a piece of government land, but local rancher Dave Crenshaw claims the land is part of his holdings, and he and his henchmen try to drive the O'Days off. Cowhand Jerry Wilson and his dog, Dynamite, come to their aid against Crenshaw.