10 Awesome B-Western Movies That Are Worth Your Time (2024)

Before the Golden Age of the Western genre, the B-Western reigned supreme. While there were always cheap, campy horror movies and trashy low-budget comedies, the B-Western was the archetypical B-movie. Produced on a minuscule budget with an audience of children in mind, B-Westerns were short, cheap Western adventures that played after an A-feature in early theatrical double bills. While A-features had expensive, purpose-built sets and recognizable stars, B-Westerns relied on stock characters, familiar tropes, and sometimes even reused stock footage.

While all of this makes the B-Western sound like a blip in the history of cinema, these cheaply produced curios actually helped shape the future of the genre. Some of the best Western directors of all time got their start working on B-Westerns and the tropes popularized by these profitable releases went on to appear in many more prestigious Westerns. In fact, the B-Western effectively set the stage for the genre's Golden Age, as older audiences embraced the genre and the Western gained a certain level of prestige.

10 Riders Of The West (1942)

1942’s Riders Of The West sees a heroic US Marshall and his band of ranchers stop a corrupt businessman from foreclosing on a valley full of innocent civilians. What seems to be a story about cattle rustling soon reveals itself to be the tale of bankers and businessmen conspiring to bankrupt an entire town while the Rough Riders do everything in their power to stop them. While many of the classic Westerns from this period feature pretty dated politics, Riders of the West’s fast-paced story is surprisingly resonant today.

9 The Outcast (1954)

1954’s The Outcast was a little more expensive than most of the B-Westerns of its era and its shows, with this handsome release featuring some stunning cinematography. The plot is a classic revenge story, but viewers shouldn’t expect anything as dark as Clint Eastwood’s Western classic Unforgiven. Instead, The Outcast’s story sees its charming hero get vengeance on the uncle who stole his inheritance, all while charming his love interest and flirting with his uncle’s fiancée. Fleet-footed and funny, this is an archetypical classic B-Western.

8 Tombstone Canyon (1932)

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1932’s Tombstone Canyon was directed by Alan James, a B-movie legend who went on to make 1937’s Dick Tracy adaptation. While most of the B-Westerns from this era shied away from depicting death on-screen, Tombstone Canyon lived up to its name. The movie follows a drifter who shows up in a new town only to find himself attacked by a murderer known only as the Phantom. The hero starts impersonating the Phantom to work out the motive behind his string of killings in a mysterious plot that is surprisingly dark for a B-Western of this era.

7 The San Antonio Kid (1944)

The San Antonio Kid starred Western legend Wild Bill Elliott as Red Ryder. The character was so popular that the star appeared in over twenty movies playing this role. In this adventure, Ryder uncovers a conspiracy to drive ranchers off their land so that greedy barons could profit from the oil reserves under their homes. Bizarrely, this plot would be revisited in the 2023 TV show Dark Winds season 2, albeit in a much darker, more R-rated form.

6 Winds Of The Wasteland (1936)

1936’s Winds of the Wasteland focused on a very different sort of cowboy than most viewers would be used to when a pair of Pony Express riders were cast as the movie’s heroes. The two heroes find themselves out of business when the telegraph arrives in town but, luckily, the duo can still compete for a government mail contract that will keep them in the job. However, they’ll have to outrace a competitive, villainous businessman, thus necessitating all the high-risk stunts that B-Westerns were famous for.

5 Sioux City Sue (1946)

Sioux City Sue is technically a Western, but it is also a goofy, self-aware parody of the genre. Where later Western comedy movies would take aim at the genre’s tropes, this Gene Autry vehicle instead mocks Hollywood and the movie industry as its small-town hero is convinced to star in a movie by the titular talent agent. Hijinks ensue as Sioux City Sue parodies both the conventions of the Western and the movie industry in its sweet, silly story.

4 The Grey Vulture (1926)

Another comedic B-Western, 1926’s The Grey Vulture follows a charismatic daydreamer as he imagines himself as a traditional heroic cowboy. In reality, the “Knight of the Plains” Bart Miller is just a likable slacker, but in his head, he is a chivalric do-gooder. The Grey Vulture brings to mind everything from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to Don Quixote, and it is hard not to fall for its well-meaning if foolhardy hero by the end of its brisk 58-minute runtime.

3 Sagebrush Trail (1933)

1933’s Sagebrush Trail was an early starring vehicle for Western genre legend John Wayne. Wayne stars as John Brant, a man arrested for a murder he didn’t commit who escapes with a fellow outlaw. While on the run, Brant discovers that his companion really is a killer, and finds himself in a moral quandary. More morally complicated than many B-Westerns, which were typically aimed at children, Sagebrush Trail indicated the more mature stories that the genre would eventually come to focus on.

2 Man From Cheyenne (1942)

Man from Cheyenne is a 1942 Roy Rogers Western that is notable for featuring a female villain. Like most of Rogers’ output, Man from Cheyenne is anodyne even in comparison to Golden Age Westerns, and utterly harmless in comparison to the genre’s later, darker hits. However, as a sweet reminder of the B-Western’s light-hearted heyday, viewers could find far worse introductions than Man from Cheyenne, and the movie’s 52-minute runtime breezes by.

1 The Last Outlaw (1936)

1936’s The Last Outlaw is arguably the perfect B-Western for viewers who don’t know the sub-genre too well thanks to its elegiac subject matter. Like some great Westerns of the ‘00s, The Last Outlaw focuses on an aging outlaw. The antihero emerges from prison after serving a 25-year sentence and finds the world a very different place from the one he left behind. Upon release, The Last Outlaw proved such a big hit that executives were frustrated to realize it would have succeeded as an A-feature. Instead, The Last Outlaw went down in genre history as one of the best B-Western movies of all time and a testament to the Western sub-genre's qualities.