Verso il West!

first, we got people singing a song like watching a play on a stage. then the funny things showed up one by one. by watching this 1935 film i was unable not to think about what the hongkong shaw brothers did to their Chinese kung-fu movies, always with stupid screenplays, weird attires, costumes, hairdos, make-up, terrible acting... pretentious and unrealistic dialog.....all of those horrible arrangements shown in shaw brothers kung fu movies were accidentally matched this pathetic western genre b movie. all the people in this pioneering westward movie wore nice, clean and ironed costumes, even in gunfights, good guys led by john wayne were riding on white horses, wearing white shirts, while the bad guys' horses were just a mixture of different colors. there were so many laughable and pretentious scenes and dialog in this horrible film.

An American Western; A story about a boy who saw his parents murdered and his younger brother kidnapped by a gang of cattle thieves and bandits. Years later, after forming a vigilante group, he sets out to find his long-lost brother. This is a low-budget B-movie with low production values that show. It has a simple, straightforward, and serviceable plot, but it keeps up the tension on a main note of mystery. John Wayne plays the grown-up crusader and leader of cowboys with a penchant for a singalong. The editing was clumsy, which made the verbal exchanges in many of the scenes awkward, but it is directed competently otherwise, and it has some good location photography.

Newborn Republic Pictures utilizes the solid directoral ability of Robert Bradbury, and the presence of John Wayne along with Yakima Canutt and his troupe of stuntriders to produce this strongly scripted film of 1860s vigilante efforts to rid the Far West of outlaw bands that were involved in widespread robbery and cattle rustling. Bradbury, whose skill with Westerns dates back to the early silent period, directs and edits with a solid awareness of suspense, building his typically short scenes with sparse and, at times, stilted dialogue and an eye for proper cast placement which makes excellent use of defined personalities such as Wayne, Frank McGlynn Jr., and Glenn Strange, and gives particular value to the hard-riding stunt performers, who are splendid throughout this well-made (and musical) adventure filmed in California's Owens Valley, at the base of the Sierra Nevada.

Brother versus brother as the Duke leads a gang of white-horse-mounted vigilantes out to destroy every bad guy in the state. His parents murdered by a gang of cattle thieves, his brother taken and raised by the gang, John/the Duke sets out to locate the gang a decade after the event. Exciting action scenes which make up for stilted dialogue, especially from Mary MacLaren as John's Ma. As the row of good guys, black hats and black shirts on their white chargers, thunder across the screen, my thoughts hark back to the days of 17-inch black and white TV sets. In Australia this comes packaged on a cheap DVD with 'Flying Tigers' and 'Hell Town'. The DVD has excellent sound but generally below average picture quality!

Separated during an attack on their family's covered wagon, one boy is taken and raised by the murderous bandits, while the other becomes a man (John Wayne) and leads a group of vigilantes against the outlaws and his own brother.

In 1935, the Lone Star unit was sold by Monogram to the fledgling Republic Pictures, who gave producer Paul Malvern a bigger budget to work with and it really shows.

While this has basically the same formula as Wayne's earlier work for Lone Star, the production values are far greater, with some really nice photography, excellent locations, and a nice little stunt-filled finale. It's always good to see Glenn Strange play a good guy too.

Thrown in are some decent songs, including another odd lip-sync performance from the Duke. Also pretty goofy is the dedication at the beginning of the movie, a salute to the vigilantes of the old west!