Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

James Hitchcock "The Spoilers" is set during the Nome Gold Rush of the late 1890s and early 1900s. It is, apparently, based upon a novel by one Rex Beach which has been filmed on four other occasions, although I have never seen any of those versions. The "spoilers" of the title are a gang of claim-jumpers who, with the assistance of a corrupt Gold Commissioner and an equally corrupt judge are plotting to defraud honest miners of their legitimate claims. The hero is Roy Glennister, a mine owner who leads the fight against the claim-jumpers with the assistance of a saloon owner named Cherry Malotte.That sounds like the plot of a pretty standard Western; there are, for example, similarities with a film like "Duel at Silver Creek" from ten years later. In "The Spoilers", however, this standard Western plot is not taken altogether seriously but is generally played as a comedy. The gold-miners are generally crusty old characters with names like "Flapjack Sims" or "Bronco Kid Farrow". A serious film on this topic would doubtless have culminated with the bullet-riddled corpses of bad guys all lying on the ground after a climactic shoot-out, but instead the film ends with a spectacular saloon fistfight, and plenty of bruises but no fatal injuries.When the film was recently shown on television, the TV listings billed it as a "John Wayne film", but when it was first released Wayne was billed third behind Marlene Dietrich and Randolph Scott, even though he has the leading male role, that of Glennister. (Scott plays the villainous commissioner McNamara). In 1942 Scott was still the bigger name, even after Wayne's success in "Stagecoach", but today it is Wayne who is a major icon of American culture whereas Scott, although a big-name star throughout his career, is remembered, except by film buffs, more for unproven rumours of a gay affair with Cary Grant than for his films.Given the high regard in which Wayne is regarded today (for his acting, if not always for his politics), it seems strange to have to point out that he is actually the weak link in this film. Comedy, however, was never his strong point, and here he looks as though he would much rather have preferred to play Glennister as a straightforward action hero rather than having to play the whole thing for laughs. At least, however, "The Spoilers" is better than some of Wayne's other comedies from this period, such as the dire "A Man Betrayed" from the previous year and "A Lady Takes a Chance" from the following one.Most of the other actors, however, throw themselves into the comedy with gusto, especially Dietrich as Cherry Malotte, essentially a reincarnation of her character from "Destry Rides Again", complete with guttural German accent. She also gets good support from Marietta Canty as Cherry's loyal black servant Idabelle, even if some of her lines, such as the one about having to pretend that Eskimos come from Virginia, tend to grate upon the ear in these politically correct days. That concluding fist-fight is a lot of fun too. Not a great Western, although an occasionally enjoyable one. 5/10

DKosty123 This is a story about gold mines in Alaska & claim jumping. This Rex Beach work was first done as silent movies in 1914, 1923. In 1930, Gary Cooper did it with sound. Then came this 1942 version which during the war took advantage of star power.John Wayne & Marlene Deitrich & Randolph Scott are a love triangle & there is even another woman for Wayne to romance. Scott gets to play the heavy who along with a crooked judge try to ace Wayne & his partner out of their gold mine, The Midas. The other woman in Waynes life is part of the bad guys triangle, trying to lure Wayne into a trap. She utters the title line, "We're just spoilers." While I have not seen the other versions, plus 2 more done later in the 1950's, this one is stronger than your typical western because of the talented cast & the tremendous fist fight scene between Wayne & Scott which takes most of the last 10 minutes of the film.This is the only time that this cast appears together in one film & fans of all three stars have reason to look at this film. It even presents a mild verbal cat fight between Waynes 2 women. Dietrich wins though her hero is pretty badly mauled in the final sequence. She runs a bar-casino in the movie & her tag line is "Anything you can win, you can collect." She says it twice in the movie, & like most movies of this era, you never see the winner collect, it is a stirring part of the imagination.

Neil Doyle Formula stuff, but entertaining story of bad man RANDOLPH SCOTT and good guy JOHN WAYNE brawling in lusty western style over Yukon saloon queen MARLENE DIETRICH in the 1800s, with Dietrich looking like a glamorized queen of the 1940s era. It's a tidy western directed by Ray Enright in good Warner Bros. style.MARGARET LINDSAY is pretty but merely decorative as Dietrich's rival for Wayne and RICHARD BARTHELMESS is shockingly aged looking as Dietrich's admirer. He's the one with the boyish good looks who began films in the silent period. You have to wonder what happened to him at 47.It's a pretty thin story with a very predictable finish. As the bad guy, RANDOLPH SCOTT is stuck with a badly written role which has him assuming a wicked gleam in his eye and a sly grin--but that's about the extent of his characterization. JOHN WAYNE has much more to work with and he fills the role to a T. Both men appear to be in their physical prime, as does Miss Dietrich.At any moment, I expected saloon queen Dietrich to do either a dance hall number or belt out a song in her own inimitable style, but no such thing. She has a straight dramatic role and never looks anything less than ultra glamorous or stunning throughout with never a hair out of place. The men have the tough roles and the big brawl at the conclusion must have kept the two stunt men busy earning their pay.

counterrevolutionary One of the many good-but-not-great westerns (or would this be a "northern"?) that John Wayne made between *Stagecoach* and *Fort Apache*, *The Spoilers* has top-billed Marlene Dietrich more or less reprising her role from *Destry Rides Again* (they even play an instrumental version of "Little Joe" in the background of one scene).But the truly inspired bit of casting is Randolph Scott as McNamara, the Mining Commissioner.McNamara is established immediately as Wayne's rival in love and a little later as a business obstacle. Given the conventions of the genre, we would assume his villainy from the beginning...except, you know, it's *Randolph Scott*. I mean, that would be like...well, like making John Wayne the villain.So when it turns out that he is the villain, it's a genuine surprise (for the longest time, I kept thinking that he'd have one of those Hollywood conversions right at the end and help Wayne to set things right before dying in a hail of gunfire).And of course, Randolph Scott couldn't be expected to lose easily to some young whippersnapper named "Marion," so they were almost required to do the excellent brawl which ends the film.(Another inspired piece of casting which I didn't know about until I looked it up is Robert W. Service playing Robert W. Service.)