This is a review of the "Tough Guys of the West" 20 movie DVD collection issed by Brentwood Home Video.
What you have here is a very good collection of 20 B-Westerns. The films transfers range from very good or excellent to very poor. But, overall these are all watchable and are generally in fairly decent quality overall considering the age and nature of public domain films.
The film transfers for most are at least adequate and generally as good as or better than the typical low-end type of public domain product available out there. But, as I noted there are exceptions, however, and some films are in much better shape than others, but there are only maybe three or four films that I would call very poor transfers (still watchable, but in poor quality), most of the rest of the films here are such that you can generally enjoy the movie itself without being overly distracted by the scratches, fuzziness, splices, etc.
Some of the films that rank in the lower end of the quality range here include: Aces and Eights, Arizona Gunfighter, Gangster's Den, and Frontier Fury. These four films are pretty fuzzy looking - you can watch them o.k., but if you happen to really, really like any of those and were considering buying this collection just for those four films, you should look elsewhere for better copies.
On the other hand, "Abilene Town" is in much, much better quality here than I have seen in some other collections and "Hittin' the Trail", "Stampede" and "The Painted Desert" are also in very good condition here - these are all very good to excellent in terms of picture quality most of the time. Probably as good as it gets for these great old films.
The Roy Rogers film, "Nevada City" is a sharp picture, but it is washed out looking - you can compensate somewhat by increasing the contrast and still get a decent result.
In addition, please note that the Roan Group has issued a much, much better quality DVD version of the Roy Rogers film "Billy the Kid Returns" than what you find here in this collection. Also, if you are looking for a near perfect quality DVD of "Angel and the Bad Man" you need to get the one issued by Good Times which is much better than the film transfer of that film included in this collection. In both cases those two films are certainly very watchable in this collection, I'm just letting you know that if you want perfect copies of those two films and are willing to pay the extra money to get them, significantly better film transfers can be found elsewhere. The ones on this collection are certainly watchable and enjoyable, just not perfect.
Here is a list of the movies included in this set:
Abilene Town - Randolph Scott
Aces and Eights - Tim McCoy
Angel and the Badman - John Wayne
The Arizona Gunfighter - Bob Steele
Cavalcade of the West - Hoot Gibson
Dawn on the Great Divide - Buck Jones
Fighting Caravans - Gary Cooper
Gangster's Den - Buster Crabbe
Hittin the Trail - Tex Ritter
The Light of Western Stars - Alan Ladd
My Outlaw Brother -
Nevada City - Roy Rogers & George "Gabby" Hayes
Painted Desert - Clark Gable
The Phantom Thunderbolt - Ken Maynard
Santa Fe Trail - Errol Flynn
Billy the Kid Returns - Roy Rogers
Boss of Bullion City - Johhny Mack Brown
Range Defenders - Ray "Crash" Corrigan
Stampede - Charles Starrett
Frontier Fury - Charles Starrett
