Die Wasserrechte von Lost Creek

Early talkie in which John Wayne accompanied by George ¨Gaby¨ Hayes and a beautiful damsel face ominous enemies who attempt to take the water supply . Bad guy Kincaid (Forrest Taylor) controls the local water supply and plans to do in the other ranchers . Government agent Saunders (John Wayne) shows up undercover to do in Kincaid and to find out who is stealing water from the local farmers . Meantime, Saunders wins the heart of one of his victims , Fay Denton (Cecilia Parker) . Sanders meets Charlie Denton (George Gaby Hayes, this time without beard and he bears the comic relief , as usual), an old rancher , become partners and Sandy helps as well as secures water rights for farmers . Meanwhile , the nasty wealthy Land Baron seeks vengeance and take lands from poor farmers at exorbitant rates.

The picture gets thrills , Western action , shootouts , a love story , and several fights between Wayne and his enemies ; being quite entertaining and including some comical elements . It's a low budget film with good actors , technicians, mediocre production values , pleasing results and usually regarded as one of the best Westerns made by John Wayne during his ¨Lone Star¨ period . The picture packs brawls and fights in silent cinema style and and exciting pursuits . Nice acting by John Wayne as a young Singin' Sandy Saunders who finds himself involved with claim jumpers , powerful owners and ambitious guys . Very early Wayne has the Duke looking awfully young as an undercover agent securing water rights and he even sings some songs . Sympathetic performance from veteran George ¨Gaby¨ Hayes as short-tempered person , Gaby steals the show , as usual . One of the few sidekicks to land on the annual list of Top Ten Western Box office Stars, he did so repeatedly . In his early films, he alternated between whiskered comic-relief sidekicks and clean-shaven bad guys, but by the later 1930s, he worked almost exclusively as a Western sidekick to stars such as John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Randolph Scott. After his last film, in 1950, he starred as the host of a network television show devoted to stories of the Old West for children, The Gabby Hayes Show (1950). Mediocre cinematography by Archie Stout , a notorious cameraman with a long career . Being necessary an alright remastering because of the film-copy is washed-out . The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film . Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely and usually badly edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duplicated from second- or third-generation or more copies of the film . The motion picture was professionally directed by Robert North Bradbury who made various early John Wayne vehicles .

John Wayne played a great role in the super-production ¨The big trail¨(1930) but he subsequently fell in B series during the thirties . Most of them in ¨Lone Star¨ productions , usually directed by Robert N. Bradbury , such as : ¨Rough romance¨, ¨The range feud¨, ¨Texas cyclone¨, ¨Two-fisted law¨, ¨Ride him cowboy¨, ¨Big stampede¨, ¨Haunted gold¨ , ¨The telegraph law¨, ¨Somewhere in Sonora¨ , ¨The man from Utah¨ , The man from Monterrey¨, ¨The lawless frontier¨ , ¨West of the divide¨, Rainbow Valley¨ , The desert trail¨ , The dawn rider¨, ¨Lawless range¨, The Oregon Trail¨ , and ¨Born in the west¨ . In 1938 he participated in Republic series with ¨The three musketeers¨ replacing Robert Livingston and in which George Sherman directed 8 films . Later on , Wayne starred the hit ¨The stagecoach¨ by John Ford and took part in ¨A movies¨ such as¨: ¨Allegheny uprising¨, ¨Dark command¨, ¨The spoilers¨, ¨In old California¨, ¨War of the wildcats¨, ¨Tall in the saddle¨, ¨Flame of the Barbary Coast¨ and ¨Dakota¨ . And financed his first production : ¨Angel and the badman¨ . Subsequently , with ¨Red River¨ John rose at top box-office and after that , he starred many successes .

This movie is surprisingly good. Director Robert North Bradbury, actor Bob Steele's father, did some of his best work here.

There is an attention to detail in this film that is missing from too many B Westerns.

The cast is top flight, with John Wayne, even this early, showing that personality that led him to become the single most popular movie star in the history of Hollywood. (Yes, even today there is no single star who has sold as many tickets.)

Al St. John, later known as "Fuzzy," plays a different kind of role, but still shows himself the champion scene stealer.

Cecilia Parker was a doll, cute, perky, with animated features that should have led her into more fame.

The stunt work shows the hand of that master, Yakima Canutt, who is also cast in a minor part.

All in all, this movie is about as much fun as any one film can be; it is more than worth watching: it is worth watching again.

First of all, joeytheBrit says that Cecilia Parker "...bakes cookies too." No, no, no. She does NOT bake cookies in this movie she bakes BISQUITS! Bisquits are entirely different from cookies! In the old west, biscuits were usually made with buttermilk and were eaten primarily with breakfast. Anyway, Joey is certainly correct in saying that Cecilia Parker is impossibly cute, I wish I could meet someone like her! As for the film itself the story is actually quite good and told in a fairly entertaining manner. Remember, this was filmed in 1933! The acting is just passable. Yakima Cannutt should have stayed with the stunt work as he was certainly no actor! John Wayne as "Singing Sandy" is ridiculous. The songs are just silly and don't belong in the movie. It is very obvious that Wayne did NOT do the singing. The voice in the songs sounds nothing like Wayne's voice. The songs only detract from the otherwise fairly decent story.

I recently purchased this film on a special triple bill DVD from an overly cheap discount store, in fact it was so cheap that the three movie disc cost me just one single pound of my hard earned British currency.

This film was both fantastic and atrocious in one. An exciting plot, but with laughable performances from the entire cast.

We know that all great actors have to start somewhere and the lone star westerns of the early thirties were what John 'The Duke' Wayne cut his teeth on.

To look at his work in his final film The Shootist in 1976, you can see just how much he had learnt over his 40 years in the business and what a great actor he did eventually become, but to look at his performances in these early days, you can understand why he spent most of the 1930's in relative obscurity.

Although Wayne looks uncomfortable throughout most of these films and his acting is wooden to say the least, it can't all be blamed on him.

These movies were the product of their day and cannot be judged by todays standards. Intended only as supporting features, these long forgotten studios turned out these 'B' movies by the shed load. Badly formed scripts with badly shaped characters must have poured though these fledgling studios like water through a hoop and with a stock company of actors who's style was still formed in the pantomime silent era, they were bound to be a bit cheesy. In fact if in 1933 there were Oscars awarded for the greatest achievement in over acting then this would be the motion picture with greatest ever hoard.

Wayne's character is a notorious gunman with a name that must have put the fear of God into whoever crossed his path, Singing Sandy Saunders.

Laugh? I damn near wet my pants.

And if that wasn't enough to give me the biggest gut wrencher of the century, then George 'Gabby' Hayes certainly iced the cake.

After an appalling song that sounded like two cats fighting over a piece of fish in a metal barrel, the great Gabby uttered the line, "Mmmm. I could listen to that all night." The line itself is worthy of side stitching surgery, but the look of peace and serenity on his face was just too much for the old chuckle muscles which then went on to explode.

I can honestly say that a truly inspired and well written comedy has never made me laugh as much as this film did.

However the story is a good one, with the corrupt businessman holding the town's ranchers to ransom over his monopoly in the water market with a view of buying up all the farms etc.

It survives today as nothing more than a nostalgic glimpse into the past, not only at a bygone era in cinema making, but as a chance to see a real Hollywood legend finding his feet. This alone makes it worth every penny of the thirty-three pence I in effect paid for it.

Forget the lame opening of Singin' Sandy (Wayne) warbling a tune that sounds about as much like Wayne's singing voice as mine does. This is still a solid Lone Star programmer. There's not a lot of hard riding or fast shooting, but there is a strong story-line, along with that stellar cast of Lone Star regulars-- George Hayes (before Gabby), Yakima Canutt, Earl Dwire, and Forrest Taylor, excellent as the head bad guy.

I expect the plot really resonated with Dust Bowl audiences of the time. Bad guy Taylor wants to use water rights to buy up all the little farmers in the valley. The effects of water returning to the valley are quite well done for a programmer. Also the crowd scenes look like real farmers, while the 30 seconds of the plain-faced frontier woman appealing to the crowd should be studied by A-grade Westerns.

Wayne is quite engaging as the good guy, looking every inch the part. Also, look for Al (Fuzzy) St. John, sans whiskers, as one of the bad guys, no less. One complaint-- there are two really tumbling trip-wire scenes that send the poor horses head over hoofs. I hope they survived. That was one real problem with these 30's Westerns. Anyway, it's still an entertaining 60 minutes for fans of Wayne and Lone Star.