A Belle Starr like outlaw named The Hawk has been committing all kinds of crime in the Powder River. In fact several of the first ten minutes of The Hawk Of Powder River are just a lot of crime sequences with a lot of riding and shooting culminating in the cold blooded murder of the editor of the town newspaper. The Hawk and the gang didn't like the editorial policy of the paper.
Jennifer Holt is the Hawk and she's one of the meanest women you'll find in films, but you'll find them in noir films far more than westerns. It was unusual for a film geared to the Saturday matinée kids to have a character like here. She operates with impunity using her uncle's ranch. He must have been one dim bulb not to see what was going on around him, but when he did discover it, two of her men dispose of him.
However the uncle's daughter June Carlson and Holt's cousin is arriving the next day is coming in on the stage from school back east. If she can just get her out of the way, Holt can really operate without hindrance.
But it's at this point that our hero Eddie Dean and sidekick Roscoe Ates take a hand and of course set things right.
This PRC film is an Eddie Dean western, but Jennifer Holt who had a brother named Tim who did a better series of B westerns at RKO really steals this one. She's one amoral woman who has as few redeeming qualities as Lee Marvin in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Jennifer Holt lifts this B western far above the norm.
