A Marca Sinistra

When the sheriff is killed by outlaws, they bring back his predecessor. Too bad for the crooks it's Harry Carey.

Despite Carey's solid presence, it's not a very good movie, even for a B western. I suspect that it being written and directed by Harry Fraser explains that pretty well, but it's also the issues that go with the sort of movie that would hire Fraser as a director. It proceeds at a crawl, thanks to the sort of pacing that requires people to walk front the front of a yard to the door rather than cutting to save time and improve the pace. In addition, the poverty is shown by the obvious lack of retakes. Carey says a line poorly, and Fraser didn't think it required a retake.

Even Carey's usual mild and mildly self-deprecating humor doesn't do much to lift this production up. He may have been Universal's big western star twenty years earlier, but now, working on Poverty Row, his productions were not good. Fortunately for him, he had already begun his transformation into a character star and would continue to delight audiences for another decade until his death in 1947 at the age of 69.