Product Details

• Actors: John Wayne, Mary Kornman, Paul Fix, Eddy Chandler, Carmen Laroux
• Directors: Lewis D. Collins
• Writers: Lindsley Parsons
• Producers: Paul Malvern
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: June 22, 1994
• Run Time: 54 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302842778
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #655,506 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Duke has a presence even in these early films, November 21, 2009

By 

Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: John Wayne Collection 2: Desert Trail & Frontier [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I watched the Republic VHS copy of these two early Wayne b-movie cheapies; it's really only for the hard-core fans and western completists, but that said I had fun.

THE DESERT TRAIL (directed by Lewis Milestone, 1935)
A generally lighthearted affair, with Wayne as small-time rodeo star John Scott and his gambin' fool friend Kansas Charlie (Eddy Chandler) getting blamed for a robbery and murder at a rodeo cashier's and having to prove their innocence and fight off the real killers. Lots of riding back and forth between towns and faking of identities. Wayne shows his charm with shop clerk Anne (Mary Kornman), but this is all fairly dull and predictable stuff.

NEW FRONTIER aka FRONTIER HORIZON (directed by George Sherman, 1939)
Filmed after STAGECOACH but before that film took the star up to heights that he never would fall from, this is Wayne's last in the "Three Mesquiteers" series - and in fact his last cheapie "b" movie. It's more interesting than THE DESERT TRAIL, about a land-grab scheme that Wayne and his "Three Mesquiteers" cohorts ("Crash" Corrigan and Raymond Hatton) have to thwart to save their town.

Both films mix modern and old-west elements with zero regard for authenticity - the main characters riding horses and stagecoaches despite most of the content suggesting that the films take place in contemporary times, and some of the shots of the rodeo grounds in the first film, in a town called "Rattlesnake Gulch" are seemingly taken from footage of Belmont or some other huge modern racetrack; it's sure not a small-town western vibe. There are telephones everywhere, but when there's an emergency people jump on their horses and ride to save the day. It will probably strike most modern audiences as rather weird, but such things were commonplace in the b-westerns of the 30s, and for me at least provide some of the goofy charm that makes these films still watchable - if not exactly "great".

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Duke does comedy in this entertaining early western, May 5, 2003

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Desert Trail [VHS] (VHS Tape)

1935's The Desert Trail offers something of a change of pace for John Wayne in his early acting career. This time around, in the role of John Scott alias John Jones, he's not exactly a good guy, but he's not exactly a bad guy either. What's more, he and his pal Kansas Charlie alias Rev. Harry Smith (Eddy Chandler) are a comic team of sorts. Their antics certainly made me laugh on several occasions. The two like to needle each other pretty good, and they are constantly trying to spark the same girl wherever they go. In times of trouble, they are known to get in minor catfights which invariably feature Charlie missing Scott by a mile, then having his foot stomped by his friend. This time, their attempts to outdo one another land them in hot water, accused of a murder and robbery they didn't commit. They trail the real criminal to Poker Flats and assume new identities, but they face the daunting task of clearing their names before the wrong hand of the law manages to nab them. There is one short scene of rodeo action taken from stock footage seen in many other early westerns from Lone Star Productions, but other than that this is an entertaining western featuring a comedic side of John Wayne that was fairly unusual at the time of the film's release in 1935.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars John Wayne and Eddy Chandler team up for some Western fun, June 21, 2004

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Desert Trail [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I had to double check to make sure that "The Desert Trail" was still part of the series of sixteen B Westerns that John Wayne made for Lone Star/Monogram between 1933 and 1935. These films were made for $10,000 each in five days, with Wayne making $2,500 and the plots were pretty repetitive. Wayne plays an undercover lawman who the bad guys think is one of them, there are sequences involving exciting stunt work by the legendary Yakima Canutt, and the good guys win. But "The Desert Trail," made in 1935 is a bit different because it has much more intentional comedy than we have seen in the series. Maybe it was because Canutt was not involved, but there is also the fact that for the first time in the series George "Gabby" Hayes is not involved and the director was Lewis D. Collins instead of Robert N. Bradbury. The result is one of the more atypical of the young Duke's Lone Star efforts.

Wayne plays John Scott, a rodeo star and his best buddy is the gambler, Kansas Charlie (Eddy Chandler). The pair are framed for a robbery-murder in Rattlesnake Gulch by bad guy Pete (Al Ferguson) and have to flee to Poker City. There they take the names John Jones and the Rev. Harry Smith and once again get fingered by Pete. Fortunately Pete's accomplice, Jim (Paul Fix) has a bit of a conscience and helps out the boys and then things proceed as expected. If you want to get excited about John Wayne being a rodeo star, forget it, because it is all stock footage. The plot is nothing special, but Wayne and Chandler have some fun with what is going on and that makes this an above average Wayne film for the period. Mary Kornman as Anne and Carmen LaRoux as Juanita LaRoux provide the love interests for the boys. "The Desert Trail" is one of the better ones in this series, but keep in mind that it is not a typical example of what the young Duke was doing at this early point in his career.