Scarlet River is a 1933 American pre-Code Western film directed by Otto Brower, written by Harold Shumate, and starring Tom Keene, Dorothy Wilson, Roscoe Ates, Lon Chaney Jr. and Edgar Kennedy.

A flourish of car horns announces the arrival of a huge limousine and a crowd of people, there to sell oil leases.

Back at the studio restaurant, a colleague shows star Tom Baxter a photo of the Scarlet River Ranch, about to be returned with an unsolicited scenario.

The photograph dissolves into the live ranch, where the mailman is trying to fit a returned manuscript into the mailbox.

The mailman outlines the situation at the ranch: Miss Judy must renew the note or the lender will foreclose.

Foreman Jeff approves young Buck's chewing tobacco and gets him to take care of his horse.

Ulysses tells Jeff about his movie plot: A foreman is planning to steal a ranch and force the owner to marry him.

Jeff meets with banker "Clink" McPherson and demands a larger cut from their deal, but Clink threatens to tell the sheriff that Jeff is responsible for the rustling, hay-burning’s and water-poisoning.

Later, Judy watches the filming of a kiss, and confesses to Tom that she could never make love in front of people.

That night, Tom rides after Jeff and sees him kill several steers, supposedly because they drank bad water.

The note says that Judy will be killed unless Tom and his crew leave Scarlet River.

Myrna Loy, Joel McCrea, Bruce Cabot and Rochelle Hudson have brief, uncredited cameos in an early scene at the film studio.

The director of photography was Nicholas Musuraca, who later worked with Jacques Tourneur on Cat People and Out of the Past.