The Lawless Frontier

You have to be a diehard John Wayne fan to watch some of these lonestar productions he did early in his career. Some are actually pretty good and others not so much.

In this one it's difficult to tell what's going on most of the time and it's laugh out loud funny as they keep riding back and forth on their horses about the last 15 minutes of the film. Twice would have been suffice but it felt like they cut back and forth to them riding on their horses about a million times (which they do a lot in Wayne's Lonestar production films, but it seems the most in this one)

John's parents are killed by a renegade bandit, played to the hilt by perennial bad guy, Earl Dwire. Dwire injures Hayes, who joins with John to bring him and his gang to justice.

The local sheriff, Jack Rockwell, is convinced that John's one of the gang, and when Hayes is shot, arrests John for the shooting.

There are the usual chases, gun battles, and fights that hallmark these "B" Westerns. There is one extended walking scene where you can see the Duke perfecting his special walk that became a trademark.

An excellent stunt has John riding a log down a large drainage ditch. Pretty amazing, and not without danger to the actor.

Beware though, the DVD copy looks as if they took the print from an Extended Play (EP) VHS copy. Very disappointing, but, a classic from John Wayne.

"The Lawless Frontier" is another of John Wayne's Lone Star westerns released in the 1933-35 period. As in many of the other entries in the series, this one was written and directed by Robert N. Bradbury (who was Bob Steele's father by the way.) Again the cast is made up mostly from the "Lone Star Stock Company" of players.

The plot has young John Tobin (Wayne) arriving at his father's ranch just after he has been killed by a gang of rustlers headed by bandit Pandro Zanti (Earl Dwire) and his gang. Zanti, who for what it is worth, is half Apache, half white, is posing as a Mexican outlaw complete with accent.

Zanti comes upon the small ranch of Dusty (George Hayes) and his comely young grand daughter Ruby (Sheila Terry), and decides to take the girl unto himself. Arriving just as Zanti is about to murder Dusty and carry off Ruby, Tobin arrives and joins forces with Dusty to bring the bandits to justice. Tobin has an eye for the lovely Ruby as well. Into the mix rides Sheriff Luke Williams (Jack Rockwell) who is also in pursuit of the bandits. In true "B" western fashion, the good guys win out over the baddies and guess who gets the girl.

As in most of Wayne's Lone Star Westerns, the level is raised somewhat by the expert stunt work of the legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt. He jumps a horse over a cliff and performs several horse falls and riding stunts in this one, as well as playing the part of Dwire's henchman Joe.

In the world of poverty row quickies, re-takes almost never happened. This film is no exception. Watch the scene where Wayne chases and takes down Dwire. As they get up out of the dust, Wayne's gun and holster suddenly switch from his right side to his left and back to the right again as he mounts his horse.

George Hayes was still a couple of years away from his grizzled old sidekick of "Windy/Gabby". In this film though he looks like Gabby and sounds like Gabby but plays it straight. Hayes played a variety of character roles in this series and didn't settle into his sidekick role until he joined the Hopalong Cassidy series in 1935. The "Gabby" character didn't come along until he moved to Republic around 1938 to ride with Roy Rogers. John Wayne was still learning his trade at this point but if you watch closely you can catch glimpses of his future on-screen persona emerging.

Average "B" western lifted a notch or two by the excellent stunt work.

Secret passages, dynamite explosions, lots of hard riding, and the great team of Hayes and Wayne, so what else can a front-row kid turned old geezer ask for. Nothing. The movie's got it all. Okay, the plot's got more crazy twists than a corkscrew and Earl Dwire's Mexican accent is the worst until Larry Storch's Gunfever (1958), but who cares. It's Wayne at his likable peak and Hayes's Gabby is about three-quarters complete. Some great stunts, as expected from a cast that includes maestro Yakima Canutt, along with a leading lady who really can ride (one bad trip-wire stunt, my only complaint). Watch for the unexpected and humorous twist when Wayne takes a short-cut to nail Dwire. Sometimes these programmers can surprise you. I guess kids don't play cowboy anymore. Computers have taken away imaginary play. Too bad. Now, if I were just x years younger, I'd strap on my cap pistol, get my stick horse and join up with the posse. But first I got to get me one of those really big, big hats.

So what can you say about a film that has the villain hamming it up with a lousy Mexican accent, an opening that has an atrocious editing job(mixing day and night footage in the same scene)and a dumb sheriff who wants to arrest the wrong man and botches his handcuffing of the real villain? For all its faults, it's actually not too bad. The chase scenes actually are quite good, with realistic falls from horseback by the girl and the villain in separate sequences. In real life, galloping over rough terrain, often with people shooting at one another, would cause those spills frequently. Once you get past the horrendous opening, Archie Stout's photography is pretty good for a B movie. I especially liked the desert foot-chase scene, with the towering basalt cliffs of Red Rock Canyon in the background. All told, the action sequences and sometimes stunning photography kept this and other John Wayne potboilers from being dull and gave depression-era audiences their money's worth, which was what made B westerns so popular in the first place. Just like audiences back then did, I sat back and enjoyed the ride, bumpy though it may be at times. Dale Roloff