Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Invaderbank
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Skyler
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Uriah43
This movie begins with a lone cowboy by the name of "Randy Bowers" (John Wayne) riding to a saloon on the outskirts of a small town out west. When he enters he notices 4 or 5 dead bodies and a safe that has apparently been ransacked. Unfortunately for Randy a posse arrives while he is looking at some remaining documents in the safe and he is arrested for murder. What neither he nor the sheriff realizes however is that there was someone still inside the saloon who was watching everything that happened. Not only that, but as the movie progresses it becomes even more obvious that things aren't necessarily as they seem. Now, as far as the merits of this movie are concerned I must say that, even though it has John Wayne as the main character, this film was clearly produced before his rise to super stardom. Although he manages to hold his own as far as acting is concerned the rest of the cast were not nearly as competent. On that score it certainly didn't help that the script was extremely weak as well. Less critically, I have attributed the fact that this movie was filmed in black and white and lasts only 53 minutes as simply a product of its time (1934). Even so, I still have to call it like I see it and I have rated this movie accordingly. Slightly below average.
MartinHafer
Like the other John Wayne B-westerns I recently saw on the Encore Channel, inexplicably someone has added a recent musical accompaniment. Using electronic instruments, loud and often inappropriate music punctuates scenes like a 2x4 upside your skull! Why, oh, why?!The film begins with Randy (John Wayne) arriving at a bar--only to find all the people inside dead and the safe ransacked. Soon, the Sheriff and a posse arrive and arrest--and they just assume he killed everyone--though there really isn't any reason to believe this. You just need to assume he and the rest are total idiots, as the idea of one man killing everyone AND Randy's gun still loaded would sure seem to indicate he was not the murderer.The bar owner's niece (the only really smart person in the film) realizes Randy is innocent when he provides documentation that he's a secret agent and helps him escape from jail. Wayne does NOT want the rest of the town to know his identity, however, as he wants to try to investigate the actions of the evil gang responsible for the killings.Interestingly, Gabby Hayes plays a baddie--something he did occasionally in earlier B-movies but simply never would have done during his later years as a crazy coot sidekick. Here, however, he wears his false teeth and is clean-shaven--and those unfamiliar with this persona from his earlier films might have a hard time recognizing him. I liked the plot device of having him pretending to be a harmless mute shop owner, though the fact he was evil was telegraphed by the message Randy finds scrawled on a wanted poster only a minute or so into the film--so they really tipped their hat, so to speak, too early.In addition to the goofs listed on IMDb, I noticed a few others. When Mat the Mute wrote his notes, you see him very rapidly writing. Yet, when there's a closeup, it's obviously a different person writing at half the speed. Also, after Randy jumps in the river and then discovers the gang's hideout, he's miraculously dry in the next scene. Oddly, however, the gang offer him a set of clothes to change into, so they didn't totally blow this scene.Despite the goofs and the film seemingly too rushed and too straight-forward, it is pretty good for an early B-western. The plot isn't bad, the ending is nice and violent (yay, violence!) and the leading lady was clever and not a total idiot! Not great but still watchable after all these years.
weezeralfalfa
This is one of the few Lone Star Wayne westerns in which George(later "Gabby") Hayes was the chief villain rather than working with Wayne in bringing the baddies to justice. As in the other film in this series I have seen where Hayes was the chief villain, he is barely recognizable as the same person who played an oldtimer during this period as well as later. After he left Lone Star, he would(to my knowledge) be seen exclusively in his oldtimer role. As the villain, he was usually clean- shaven and lacked his distinctive oldtimer toothless manner of speech and improvised vocabulary. In the present film, he is seen in two incarnations: Matt the Mute, a bespectacled hunchbacked old man about town with a generous mustache, looking rather like TR, who can hear but not talk, and clean-shaven 20-20 visioned Marvin Black, a notorious outlaw leader who lives in a hideout behind a waterfall, some miles out of town. Black usually lives up to his name, dressed in all black, including his hat, in contrast to the rest of his gang and to Matt the Mute. As Matt, he often learns information relevant to his outlaw schemes.Wayne rides into town as a government special investigator, with the goal of infiltrating the Black gang. No one knows of his real status except for Sally, the niece of the recently murdered proprietor of the Half Way House. Black's present goal is to steal a large stash of cash believed somewhere in the Half Way House and to arm twist Sally, as the heir, into selling this establishment to him. Wayne is suspected by the town folk of the murder of Sally's uncle and others, although Sally knows this is false. She facilitates his escape from jail; however, he has a tough job not being gunned down by either the posse or the outlaws.Having seen quite a few of Wayne's Lone Star "B" westerns, I would rate this as one of the better ones, in terms of plot, although it lacked the comic element sometimes present. The beginning and end were particularly memorable. Newcomer Wayne walks into a watering hole in the middle of nowhere to find everyone dead, the player piano still making music and a pair of eyes moving behind a portrait with the eyes cut out. However, the ending would have been much more effective if the audience didn't know beforehand that Wayne had replaced the contested Half Way House money with dynamite.(Today, we would probably categorize Wayne as a bomb-rigging terrorist). Also, Sally seems unusually calm in seeing her Half Way House blown to smithereens, possibly including her fortune in cash. I've noticed that, whereas the male actors are mostly the same in this series of westerns, the female lead usually changes each time, giving Wayne quite a collection of film wives. Most of them are portrayed as basically helpless damsels in distress in the setting of the Wild West, and many look like they could have just stepped out of the Zeigfield Follies.
var-1
I had seen this movie when I was a boy (Before WWII) and was surprised that the local library had a copy. Saw it again after some sixty years and forgot how bad it was. This is an example of a movie that was not a "A" movie. No editing, poor script, weak acting and not much directing. Should not even be as high as a "B" Had a laugh at how jaded I've become over the years. Seems to me I thought it was good when I originally saw it.
