Arizona Raiders (1965)

A later Audie Murphy film that looks surprisingly high budget (using the familiar Old Tuscon Studios). Murphy plays a member of Quantrill's raiders who is caught, jailed, but then freed so that he can go after the remaining members of his own gang. Buster Crabbe plays the former Captain who captured Murphy who needs his help.

This very much falls into the "entertaining but not a lot of substance" category. The plot frankly seems a little contrived (it isn't really clear why only Murphy and his friend can help), and it also isn't really obvious why Murphy and friend are not as bad as the other rangers, except that it's a given that they are. There's some slightly dubious politics relating to the Indian's – although they are portrayed as nominally sympathetic. Murphy's acting is better (more natural) than in many of his 50s films, although the character has a little less depth than in the best of those.

With that in mind, it moves along at a nice pace and knows exactly when to kill people off to keep the plot moving, so it's not exactly a hardship to watch. It's also surprisingly violent for it's mid-60s production (I know the Western was becoming more violent around this time, but I was slightly surprised to see it trickle down to a middle-of-the-road mid-budget western like this one).