BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

GazerRise Fantastic!

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

MartinHafer While I like a Johnny Mack Brown film because of his natural look and acting style, "Branded a Coward" just has too many strikes against it to make it a film I'd recommend. The biggest problem is the casting of a truly annoying character actor, Syd Saylor, in the film. He plays his usual stuttering sidekick--and made me feel ill watching him. Saylor's shtick was to stutter so badly that he made Porky Pig look like a polished Shakespearean actor by comparison! It not only was insensitive, it was grating. The other problems concern plot and clichés--more about that in a moment.The film begins with a pioneer family being attacked by bandits. The father and mother are killed and one brother is shot while the other hides in fear of his life. Twenty years pass and the brother who hid is now played by Brown. He is a nice guy and stands for law and order, but he also has a mental block and sometimes fear grips him when he's reminded of the slaughter of his family. This makes it especially tough when he's appointed sheriff and he's determined to bring the bandit leader, 'The Cat', to justice. How it all plays out is the big problem here--it's just too predictable that the brother he assumed was dead is not and is now The Cat!! And, it's REAAAALLLY predictable that The Cat will take a bullet to save Brown. And, it's ridiculous when all the loose ends in the story are tied together too perfectly. The only really great thing about the film is that eventually Saylor's character is killed--I could have cheered!!

classicsoncall "Branded a Coward" has one of the classic B Western story lines - a young boy sees his parents killed by outlaws and one day comes back to avenge the innocent. The minor twist here is that Johnny Hume (Johnny Mack Brown) really didn't plan it that way, but as one thing leads to another, well, you know.Sometimes you have to consider the era when these old time oaters were made. For 1935 this one wasn't all that bad. The leap of faith needed here is how quickly Johnny makes the transition from a 'cowering behind the bar' onlooker to full fledged Western hero when he throws down with the outlaws attacking the stagecoach in the first half. That scene offers the equally classic 'under the stagecoach' maneuver that became a trademark of many films in which Yakima Canutt appeared. Yak portrays gang leader 'Cat' as the story opens, but as things progress, hints are dropped that a new Cat mysteriously appears to take over the gang whenever it's thought the one prior has been compromised.I've only seen Syd Saylor a couple of times before and I don't recall him ever doing the stuttering gimmick. It wears after a while, but it's still a downer when he gets knocked off before the picture ends. All the while he tried getting his words out I kept thinking Porky Pig in those old Warner Brothers cartoons, and had to consider whether Saylor's bit had anything to do to inspire that character.Well you had to wonder if the finale wasn't just a bit too contrived. With the appearance of Johnny's older brother Billy, who also witnessed the death of their parents, an explanation of how he became the new 'Cat' would have been in order. Instead, you just had to take the twist ending on faith that the good brother would come out on top. But Johnny getting the girl (Billie Seward) at the end of the story - that was just par for the course.

bkoganbing Johnny Mack Brown is the one that is Branded A Coward in this B western produced by a Poverty Row studio called Supreme Pictures. It's not really his fault, he sustained a great emotional trauma as a child, seeing his family massacred by an outlaw only known as 'The Cat'. When he grew up he became a trick shot artist, but when it comes to gunplay with targets that shoot back, Brown can't forget.But when he and sidekick Syd Saylor spot a stagecoach holdup they take a hand in and save the gold shipment and Billie Seward. A grateful town makes him their marshal which Brown decides to accept after he hears that it was the Cat's gang that did the robbery and is operating in that area.This is one unusual B western in that it breaks one parameter of a B western which I will not tell and it has a surprise ending as to who the identity of the mysterious Cat is. I'd check this Johnny Mack Brown western out.

John W Chance Johnny Mack Brown made some of the best and fastest westerns for Universal during the 1940s. Here, in one of his 'Supreme Pictures', the story is a little off beat, in that although playing the crack shot rodeo rider Johnny Hume, in an early bar hold up sequence, he hides behind the bar as a shivering, frozen wide-eyed coward, unable to use the gun shaking in his hand.The reason for this is because twenty years earlier, his mother and father, who were driving their covered wagon through unknown territory with him and his older brother, were suddenly ambushed and killed by an outlaw gang. His visual flashback to this scene turns him 'yellow' in the presence of real danger. Hence to everyone he's a coward.This covered wagon ambush, with every one in the family getting killed (except for the hero) was used several times, not only in the remake "Fast on the Draw" (1950), but also in the totally botched "The Rawhide Terror" (1934), "Cavalcade of the West" (1936) and I'm sure in a few others. Of course, the other brother really doesn't die but grows up to be the new leader of the enemy gang! (Sorry for the spoiler!) Guess who has to kill him at the end? You don't see a cowardly hero again until "Sugarfoot" (1958-1959) on TV. But Johnny, although he then skips town with his side kick, Oscar (the sometimes tedious Syd Saylor), suddenly is magically transformed having no trouble at all with two six guns ablazin' knocking off some 'henchmen' and rescuing 'Ethel' (a name forever associated with Vivian Vance, if it wasn't a bad enough unglamorous name already) from an attempted stage robbery, and capturing the stage coach single handed. Back in the town of Lawless, he reluctantly agrees to become sheriff, because we now realize he has a score to settle with "The Cat."As noted by others, it was unusual to see the sidekick getting killed. Then we had the low melodramatic trick of never seeing the face of the boss villain, in this case "The Cat," but only his shadow. And in another unusual twist, Johnny kisses the girl in the middle of the picture, not just at the end. In much of the movie we have more dialog by different characters than we would get, say in a John Wayne 'Lone Star,' but this tends to slow the movie down. When I was around seven years old, Johnny Mack Brown was my favorite cowboy. Inexplicably, this movie doesn't tell me why. We do see his athleticism, because we can see that he actually is the one leaping up on his horse three times. The Mighty Yak, Yakima Canutt, does his amazing, great, slide under the stage coach and then climb up the back of it trick, and he also does a tension building drop off a cliff into a river.But really that's about it. Billie Seward is undistinguished. Syd Saylor's stuttering act gets a little grating. He has a much broader role, as a publicist / acrobat in the Clyde Beatty serial "The Lost Jungle" (1934), although the feature version is better than the serial. He also does okay as Tex Ritter's sidekick in westerns like "Arizona Days" (1937) and "Headin' for the Rio Grande" (1936). He appeared, mostly uncredited, in over 400 movies and TV shows.Despite the unusual elements, it moves a little too slowly. I give it a four.