Customer Reviews

Desert Trail [VHS]

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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".

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.

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.

Before I explain the "Alias" comment let me say that "The Desert Trail" is bad even by the standards of westerns staring The Three Stooges. In fact it features Carmen Laroux as semi-bad girl Juanita, when you hear her Mexican accent you will immediately recognize her as Senorita Rita from the classic Stooge short "Saved by the Belle".

In "The Desert Trail" John Wayne gets to play the Moe Howard character and Eddy Chandler gets to play Curly Howard. Like their Stooge counterparts a running gag throughout the 53-minute movie is Moe hitting Curly. Wayne's character, a skirt chasing bully, is not very endearing, but is supposed to be the good guy.

Playing a traveling rodeo cowboy Wayne holds up the rodeo box office at gunpoint and takes the prize money he would have won if the attendance proceeds had been good-the other riders have to settle for 25 cents on the dollar (actually even less after Wayne robs the box office). No explanation is given for Wayne's ripping off the riders and still being considered the hero who gets the girl.

Things get complicated at this point because the villain (Al Ferguson) and his sidekick Larry Fine (played by Paul Fix-who would go on to play Sheriff Micah on television's "The Rifleman") see Wayne rob the box office and then steal the remainder of the money and kill the rodeo manager. Moe and Curly get blamed.

So Moe and Curly move to another town to get away from the law and they change their names to Smith and Jones. Who do they meet first but their old friend Larry, whose sister becomes the 2nd half love interest (Senorita Rita is left behind it the old town and makes no further appearances in the movie).

Larry's sister is nicely played by a radiantly beautiful Mary Kornman (now grown up but in her younger days she was one of the original cast members of Hal Roach's "Our Gang" shorts). Kornman is the main reason to watch the mega-lame western and her scenes with Moe and Curly are much better than any others in the production, as if they used an entirely different crew to film them.

Even for 1935 the action sequences in this thing are extremely weak and the technical film-making is staggeringly bad. The two main chase scenes end with stock footage wide shots of a rider falling from a horse. Both times the editor cuts to a shot of one of the characters rolling on the ground, but there is no horse in the frame, the film stock is completely different, and the character has on different clothes than the stunt rider. There is liberal use of stock footage in other places, none of it even remotely convincing.

One thing to watch for is a scene midway into the movie where Moe and Curly get on their horses and ride away (to screen right) from a cabin as the posse is galloping toward the cabin from the left. The cameraman follows the two stooges with a slow pan right and then does a whip pan to the left to reveal the approaching posse. Outside of home movies I have never seen anything like this, not because it is looks stupid (which it does) but because a competent director would never stage a scene in this manner. They would film the two riders leaving and then reposition the camera and film the posse approaching as a separate action. Or if they were feeling creative they would stage the sequence so the camera shows the riders in the foreground and the posse approaching in the background.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

THIS TIME, JOHN WAYNE PLAYS A RODEO STAR WHO, ALONG WITH HIS FRIEND, GETS FRAMED FOR MURDER AND MUST CLEAR HIM AND HIS FRIEND'S NAME. WELL, THE MEDIOCRITY OF THIS WESTERN CAN'T BE BLAMED ON THE ACTORS, IT CAN HOWEVER, BE BLAMED ON THE STUDIO THAT MADE IT. LONE STAR PRODUCTIONS REALLY MUST'VE BEEN A HORRIBLE STUDIO TO WORK FOR, BEING THAT ALMOST EVERY JOHN WAYNE MOVIE THAT WAS MADE BY THEM ARE PREDICTABLE AND REPETITIVE. BUT, IF YOU LIKE JOHN WAYNE, YOU CAN'T GO ALL THAT WRONG.