Les cavaliers du destin

Please don't judge this film by the first 10 min.. John Wayne, alias Singin' Sandy Saunders, gets out his guitar in two spots, including the opening scene, and lip syncs to two very different sounding singing voices. Please spare us any more of this!

It's pretty bad when you have to hold up the stage in order to beat the bandits you know, from experience, are going to hold it up a little later and take the money being sent to you. But, that's the predicament striking blond Cecilia Parker found herself in when Wayne saw her horse shot out from under her by the stage driver. Seems the expected bandits were part of the same criminal outfit, headed by a Mr. Kincaid, as the stage drivers. Actually, their main racket was hoarding nearly all the regional water and selling it dear to the ranchers. The ranch owned by Gabby Hayes and daughter Cecelia has a well, the only other water source in this region. Thus, Kincaid especially wants to acquire this property for a full water monopoly, while threatening to cut off his water to the other ranchers unless they sell their land to him for next to nothing. Nice guy, Eh? Well, ole John has a plan how to get the ranchers out of this impossible situation. Kincaid falls for it like Cecilia falls for Wayne and vice versa. During the follow up horse chase of Kincaid by Wayne, poetic justice is served, and the valley ranchers presumably live happily ever after. See the movie to learn the rather unexpected details. Clever man, that Singin' Sandy Saunders. Clever, but sneaky.

An evil land baron is holding up water to a group of ranchers in order to try and take their properties for pennies on the dollar. Along comes Singin' Sandy Saunders (John Wayne), who saves the day for Gabby Hayes and his daughter by going undercover as the villain's newest gunman.

The first of sixteen films Wayne made for Lone Star/ Monogram Pictures, this tries to cast him as a singing cowboy, only with an obviously lip-synced voice. The title card prominently features his character as "Singin' Sandy" leading one to believe that this was meant to be the first in a proposed series!

Yes it's ridiculous, but also a lot of fun to see Wayne singing songs and shooting guns, especially when he does a little ditty before shooting it out with gunman Earl Dwire.

Riders Of Destiny features a rare villainous role for for Al "Fuzzy" St. John, who clowns around as much with the bad guys as he did playing a heroic sidekick, riding alongside Buster Crabbe and Lash LaRue.

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.

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.

Had the good folks at Lone Star Productions only decided not to dub John Wayne's voice with some forgettable cowboy ballads this would have been a far better western than it turned out to be.

Of course Wayne in later years would cringe at the mention of these films. If you want a good idea of how he really sounded listen to him in McLintock singing a favorite ballad of his, The Moon Shines Tonight on Pretty Redwing. The Lone Star people might have even looked for a young band singer working day to day in clubs in New Jersey around this time named Frank Sinatra who over 30 years later actually had his voice come out of Wayne's mouth during a Dean Martin show.

If they could have cut out the singing gimmick, Riders of Destiny is not a bad film, in fact a cut above some of the westerns the Duke was doing at the time. Ranchers in the valley are being squeezed out by a greedy villain played by Forrest Taylor. He's built a dam and controls all the water and it's either sell to him outright or pay his exorbitant prices for water. Gabby Hayes and his daughter Cecelia Parker happen to have the only other water around because they dug a well. Taylor especially wants their land.

The citizens have written to the federal government in Washington for intervention and they get it in the form of John Wayne. I don't think I have to go any farther. The Duke finds a very clever solution for the water problem which you should see the film to find out.

But don't lose your lunch hearing that Nelson Eddy wannabe voice coming out of Mr. Wayne's mouth.