The Dawn Rider

Catch Nelson McDowell as the lanky black-clad undertaker at movie's start. He's got the only face I've seen that appears to be assembled in sections. The eyes go in one direction, the nose in another, while the mouth bounces around like a Kleenex in a windstorm. He's fascinating. I wish we would see more of him.

Other reviewers are right. This is an average Wayne entry in the Lone Star series. Buddies Mason (Wayne) and Ben (Howes) do play off one another well and I like the way they bond after their fist-fight. It's now a friendship based on mutual respect. And when they fall out over the same girl (Burns), we feel the loss. There's also Wayne doing his patented "gunman's walk" before he duels it out with Canutt and Moore.

However, there's not much stunt work or hard riding. But the biggest problem is Dennis Moore as the chief baddie. Catch that scene that pairs up Wayne in a 2-foot hat with Moore in a 6-foot hat. Too bad Moore just doesn't measure up. Then too, the locations don't get outside greater LA, so we don't get the usual great Southern Sierra scenery. But never mind, an ex-Front Row Kid like this old geezer still gets a thrill when that great Lone Star logo pops up on the screen. Yes indeed, the Duke rides again!

Not being an expert on this genre I can't give The Dawn Rider an unqualified whoop or a hesitant snort either. I cut my eye-teeth on this type of B Western when a kid in the 60's - I've only seen a few hundred films like it since and it seems pretty much average.

Wayne looked a very smooth and supple 28 year old, swinging into saddles for countless horse races, sorry, chases, but he was a much better character to watch as the craggy icon he later became. He, and all the characters (and the story) in TDR are necessarily flat and undeveloped - the kids in the cinema at the time weren't interested in multi-layered portrayals of Tolstoy magnitude, and Lone Star weren't going to give 'em it either!

The DVD had new musical additions - I prayed for silence! But all in all a pleasant hour was spent by the TV at my ole homestead.

This film essentially begins with two cowboys named "Ben McClure" (Reed Howes) and "John Mason" (John Wayne) getting into a fistfight in the middle of a small town with John eventually coming out the winner. Being that neither man is the type of hold a grudge against a fair fight, after everything is said and done, they both become good friends. Not long after that, John steps into the freight office to see his father and, upon arriving there, finds that it is being held up by a number of armed thieves. To his great sadness and dismay, when his father puts up some resistance, the outlaws kill him right in front of John before leaving in a hasty manner. Quickly following them on horseback, John manages to kill at least one of the outlaws before he is also shot. Fortunately, Ben has followed close behind and manages to carry him to his house where a doctor and his girlfriend "Alice Gordon" (Marion Burns) are able to eventually get him back on his feet. What John doesn't know, however, is that Alice's brother "Rudd Gordon" (Dennis Moore) is the leader of the outlaw gang that killed his father and that this information is going to cause a number of problems for all concerned. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this short, Depression Era film suffered from a poor transition between scenes which gave the movie a rather choppy quality to it. The acting was also rather mediocre as well. Even so, it had an entertaining plot and, all things being equal, I have rated it accordingly. Average.

When Wayne is shot and his father murdered by armed robbers, he's nursed back to health by his friend's intended fiancé, leading to the inevitable love-triangle. Complicating things further is the fact that the killer is the girl's brother.

A decent entry in the series of Saturday matinée B-westerns that The Duke made as a contract star for Lone Star/ Monogram Pictures in the thirties, The Dawn Rider has several good action sequences and some okay melodrama.

The climactic showdown includes a well staged fistfight between John Wayne and chief heavy Yakima Canutt.

This is one of John Wayne's very early B-Westerns (1935), before he became a big "A-movie" star. The plot, which involves the Duke's father being murdered, and Wayne wounded, by robbers, is fairly standard by B-Western standards, but entertaining enough. The old black-and-white film was colorized in recent times, and the colorization was well done.

The Duke has not yet adopted his Harry Carey-taught style of talking, with occasional pauses in the middle of sentences, so he sounds a little different than the later John Wayne. The fight scenes are not done as well as they were in, let's say, Gene Autry's first starring film, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," released about three months later.

But the colorizers did study the script and insert ironic "plays on words" in a couple of scenes. When Wayne is told by a cowboy he's having problems with that there's "no need for lavender cowboys" or words to that effect, he's wearing a purple shirt. Later, when the same cowboy asks the Duke if he wants to continue a fight they were having, and Wayne says, "No," the other guy says, "Why? You yellow?" Yes, you guessed it, dear readers --in that scene, the Duke is wearing a yellow shirt.

And in an early scene where Wayne's opponent has whipped another cowboy, and begins firing his six-shooter at the man's feet to make him "dance," I thought of a scene in "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" where one of Autry's buddies gets the drop on three bad guys and tells them to "dance." One says, "Aww, we can't dance!" And the guy with the gun replies, "Anyone can dance if they're properly persuaded!" The bad guys begin cutting a rug immediately.

I wondered, "Did the director of the Autry movie pick up and use those two situations?" Because at one point in the Autry movie, a "bad guy" tells a singing cowboy Gene, "We don't need no lavender cowboys!"

Overall, "The Dawn Rider" is a good B-Western -- but "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" has better acting, and some great songs.