Cattleman Jim Bonner confirms his standing as the terror of Rawhide by running a railroad station agent out of town. Crooked bankers Ben and Joe Murdock, have embezzled $25,000, and hope to take advantage of the Bonner's poor reputation by framing him for robbery. They ship cash on an outbound train, stage a holdup, and then file an insurance claim for the stolen money - plus the twenty-five grand they've already spirited away. Since Jim is known to have a grudge against the rail line, he gets the blame.
Edmund "Hoot" Gibson, Universal's top Western star during the 1920s, broke the cowboy hero mold. He eschewed the fancy outfits worn by such contemporaries as Tom Mix and Ken Maynard, usually appearing in rumpled clothes and occasionally stuffing a six-shooter into his boot. He rode like a Cossack and acquitted himself handily in fistfights, but the majority of his starring vehicles contained abundant comedy, with Hoot most often the butt of the jokes. The 11 early talkies he made for Allied Pictures took the same approach, and The Local Bad Man is among the very best of them. Even when he's playing a hellion, Hoot is impossible to dislike, and he has a lovely female foil in Sally Blane, one of Loretta Young's sisters and a star in her own right.