AllMovie

Although bottom-of-the-barrel filmmaking on all fronts, Border Vengeance does hold a surprise or two. It is, for example, one of the very few low-budget Westerns of the 1930s to actually show the damage done by a bullet. When villain Kenneth MacDonald is shot in the ear, blood is seen oozing out between his fingers, a startling moment in any Western from the period and even more so in a Gower Gulch item like Border Vengeance. The climactic shootout in the dark is also quite effective but star Reb Russell is as wooden as his reputation, and former assistant director Raymond R. Heinz manages to drag out the 58 minutes of running time almost beyond human endurance by including footage of former Western hero Rex Bell and trick riders Montie Montana and Mabel Strickland. (Some surviving prints have mercifully eliminated the stock footage and run 42 minutes.)