Rage at Dawn 1955

Four of the Reno Brothers are corrupt robbers and killers while a fifth, Clint Reno, Denver Pyle is a respected Indiana farmer. Laura Reno, Mala Powers, has inherited the family home and serves as a housekeeper and cook to the brothers. Some of them served in the Civil War, which has given them a hardened attitude toward violence.

One bank raid in a nearby town sets off a chain of violence: one brother is killed, and the men conclude that someone they know is an informant, since the townspeople seemed to be waiting for them. They soon learn that Murphy, a local bartender, was the informant they had suspected. The Reno brothers strike him down by knocking him out and tying him up in his barn, which they then set ablaze. Murphy was an agent employed by the Peterson Detective Agency to investigate and report on the gang’s crimes.

Murphy’s replacement is James Barlow, a former secret agent for the Confederacy, who decides to join the gang by posing as a train robber—a ploy that even allows him to stage a train robbery with the full cooperation of the train crew. He also begins courting Laura. Grudgingly accepted by the brothers, led by Frank Reno, Forrest Tucker, he soon learns that they have corrupted local officials, including a judge Edgar Buchanan, allowing them to operate in that part of the state with impunity.

The plan is to pull off a train robbery with Barlow, but the scheme becomes a setup in which they are captured following a fierce shootout and taken to a jail outside the reach of the corrupted officials. Townspeople break into the jail and lynch the brothers before they can be brought to trial, despite Barlow’s attempts to intervene. Laura arrives immediately afterward and accepts his efforts as genuine.