The Desert Trail

Rodeo star John Wayne and his hard-gambling sidekick are forced to take Wayne's winnings from a crooked promoter. After they leave with the cash, two thieves murder the promoter and frame them for the killing. However, the boys are too busy chasing after a young Spanish woman and a pretty shop girl to try and clear their names!

Coming near the end of Wayne's contract with Lone Star/Monogram Pictures, this is more spare than some of the earlier films in the series. It's still a lot of fun (and funny) with more comedy in this than usual, resulting in some very amusing scenes like the one where Duke leers at the shop girl's backside!

The comedy here is reminiscent somewhat of the slapstick in Wayne's later films.

Pretty good B-Western of the venerable "bickering buddies" formula benefits from Duke Morrison's increasing confidence as an actor and comfort with the "John Wayne" persona, as well as from the increasing willingness to let Wayne play characters with a bit of an edge, rather than the Roy-Rogers-type goodie-goodies of his earlier films.

Definitely worth a look for fans of the Duke.

7/10

The opening scene in the stagecoach is hilarious. Wayne shows a real comedic talent here and throughout this tongue-in-cheek 60 minutes that he seldom showed as a super-star. The dialogue surrounding Wayne's and Kansas's competition over the girls is delightfully funny. So is the scene with Anne having to stretch out for Wayne's ogling benefit. Credit should go to writer Lindsley Parsons and director Lewis Collins who keeps Wayne loose and in the mood. And where did the guy playing Kansa come from. He looks more like a banker than a side-kick. But he sure knows his way around a laugh line. Pairing him with Wayne is almost inspired.

I guess an entry like this is largely a matter of taste. It departs from the matinée formula by emphasizing a rather adult level of humor. Probably, most kids didn't much like it. The plot is pretty good, more coherent than most, with the usual hard-riding, big-shooting action. One thing for sure-- Lone Star didn't pop for locations on this one. I can almost see the LA outskirts in the distance. Anyway, this one gave me a lot more chuckles than I ever expected, and I may be wrong, but I don't think Wayne ever again reached quite this level of relaxed comedic acting.

Rodeo star John Scott and his gambler friend Kansas Charlie are wrongly accused of armed robbery. They leave town as fast as they can to go looking for their own suspects in Poker City.

Fair to middling Wayne western with some amusing dialogue between Wayne and his gambler friend, who thinks he's irresistible to women; they are always bickering. It's more of a humorous western, the plot is busy and everything goes around in circles. It can get tedious, however it got some good action and of course Wayne, who even at a young age got that screen magnetism. He can make anything watchable.

This early John Wayne Lone Star western has a bit more going for it than the run-of-the-mill oaters Wayne had been making for Lone Star up until that time. For one, it has his old friend Paul Fix in it; Fix, being a much better actor then the standard Lone Star villain, brings a much needed professionalism to the surroundings instead of the usual hesitant line-readings often delivered in these oaters. The plot, about mistaken identity, payroll robbery and murder, is as trite and perfunctory as you'd expect it to be in a 1930s low-budget western, but Wayne's strapping good looks, easygoing charm and way with a line go a long way to making this more enjoyable. Plump, balding Eddy Chandler isn't quite believable as Wayne's womanizing "partner", and there's a running gag about something that happens whenever Chandler and Wayne are about to get into a fistfight that grows tiresome. On the other hand, Wayne's love interest is played by none other than Mary Kornman, the little "Mary" of the early "Little Rascals" fame. She is a grown-up 20-year-old now, blonde and cute as a button. Most of Wayne's leading ladies in these Lone Star/Monogram "B's" were fairly bland and colorless, but Mary is perky, cute and, yes, sexy. There's a scene in the general store, where she works, in which Wayne asks her to get him a bottle of "nerve tonic", which happens to be on the top shelf, so she has to get a ladder and climb up to the top shelf. Wayne's ogling of her pert little backside as she ascends the steps, then again as she comes down, then again a few minuter later when he asks her to climb up and get him another bottle, is surprisingly racy for a film made in 1935. Wayne makes no attempt at all to hide the fact that he is definitely checking out her butt. It's surprising that this got past the Hays Office censors, but they were probably more concerned with the product that came out of the "main" studios rather than a cheap "B" western from some--as far as they were concerned--no-name outfit.

Anyway, it's an interesting little "B", not great but not as choppy and disorganized as many of his Lone Star productions of the time. The final gunfight isn't handled all that well, and Chandler gets somewhat irritating after a while, but all in all, it's worth a look, if only to see a cute and sexy Mary Kornman.