I gangsters del Texas

John Wayne plays a sheriff who mistakenly believes he killed his best friend. So he turns in his badge and goes to live in the woods. A year later the dead friend's citified daughter shows up. Wayne has to rescue her and she offers him a job as foreman on the ranch she inherited from her father. Romance follows but not without some troubles. Eventually Wayne finds out who really killed his pal and straps on his guns to get justice.

In many ways this is a routine B western, the type Duke made plenty of early in his career. The plot elements and even some of the stunts seem familiar to other Wayne oaters I've seen from the period. But there are some interesting things I haven't seem before. John Wayne being broody, for one thing. At one point we see him with a beard and trying to look disheveled. Kind of funny. Gabby Hayes is also in this but without the grizzled old-timer shtick we all love. It's enjoyable enough for the type of unchallenging movie it is. I think these were mostly aimed at kids back in the day so don't expect anything deep.

This B-western begins with John Wayne as a town's sheriff. However, following a robbery, Wayen chases the baddies and thinks he's accidentally shot and killed an old friend--not knowing that the leader of the gang actually killed the man. Saddened by the death, he decides to quit the job and become a recluse...for a while. Eventually, he gets his act together and eventually unravels the mystery--saving the day.

Compared to other Wayne films of the era, this one is about average--entertaining but with a few problems here and there. The one big problem for me was the use of stunts--which were usually the highpoint of these films. Instead of staging new stunts, they sloppily took clips from other Wayne films and stuck them in--less than seamlessly. For example, though the grass is short and they are in a semi-wooded area, when baddies are shot, they fall in very high grass with no trees about them! Sloppy...and obviously recycled. Still, the rest of the film is breezy light entertainment--what you'd expect from such an unpretentious film.

A couple things to look for is a particularly bad job of acting and directing when the heroin enters the film. She talks directly to the camera and her delivery is less than magical...in fact, it's craptastic. Also, look for Gabby Hayes as the new sheriff. Unlike many of his other western roles, here he wears his dentures and sounds very erudite--without that 'old coot' voice you usually expect from him. This isn't too surprising, as in these Wayne westerns, Hayes experimented a lot with his characters--even sometimes playing bad guys or action heroes...of sorts.

John Wayne is the local sheriff and in his attempt to stop some would be robbers, he believes that he has killed his best friend,, he is very distraught and winds up quitting his job, and becoming a hired ranch hand in the desert, in the meantime , he helps some Indians with their day to life and problems,, George "Gabby Hayes,, plays the old sheriff , who now has to take the job of sheriff since Wayne quit.. Leroy Mason plays the villain as usual, and does a pretty good job with it. as the film moves on , one of the people he is helping a young girl, who he knows very well is the daughter of his friend,, the man who he believes he has killed, will she find out that he had something to do with it,, in the meantime he has to stop some horse thieves, and eventually it will all lead back to who shot his best friend,, and interesting watch,, not a great western,, but not a bad one either,, middle of the road , maybe a little better.

In this Lone Star production, John Wayne is a sheriff who is tricked into thinking he killed his best friend and that selfsame friend was part of a robbery of an express company.

So distraught is Wayne over this that he quits the sheriff's job and becomes a desert prospector. In these scenes the Duke with that growth of beard on him looks a whole lot like his character Tom Doniphan in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Wayne does a major reclamation job on himself after he rescues Lucile Browne from a stage holdup. Browne is the best friend's daughter.

Of course in the end the Duke does find out who are the real culprits with the help of some grateful and friendly Indians. How the Indians get into it, you have to watch Texas Terror.

Texas Terror is set in a more modern version of the west. The stage is actually a large sedan and the people out here use telephones. Kind of like the settings of most later Roy Rogers westerns.

Gabby Hayes is on hand as well as the former sheriff who steps back into his job when Wayne quits and LeRoy Mason who was in so many of these Lone Star films for Monogram as well makes a convincing villain as always.

"Texas Terror" is better than a lot of the Wayne Lonestar Productions. In this one, Wayne gets a chance to expand on his usual innocent-tough guy persona. After an incident where his friend gets shot, a distraught Wayne quits his job as sheriff. He falls apart and grows a beard and looks like he's halfway towards turning into a Gabby Hayes, gruff-old- goat character. He then does another nice-turn-around to get back to being the hero. Wayne is less stiff and actually looks interested in the scenes he's in. Its really one of his best early performances.

Besides Wayne getting to play a more multi-dimensional character, there's a great plot twist at the end. It is Wayne's Indian friends who come charging on horseback to the rescue. It is nice to see a 1935 movie where the Indians are truly the good guys and heroes in the tale.

There's an hilarious milking contest in the middle. The losing milker looks exactly like the Pappy Yokum character from Li'l Abner. He was probably the prototype.

Overall, this Wayne Lonestars becomes more interesting as it goes along. This is not something you can say about some others.