★ 6 / 10
When "Smith" (John Wayne) is wrongly accused of
CinemaSerf
When "Smith" (John Wayne) is wrongly accused of murder, he escapes from jail determined to track down the true perpetrators and to clear is name.…
When "Smith" (John Wayne) is wrongly accused of murder, he escapes from jail determined to track down the true perpetrators and to clear is name. Coincidentally he meets "Conlon" (Lane Chandler) who takes him to his gang's secret hideout where he soon becomes an integral part of their antics. On a visit to the local store, he manages to get a message about an impeding robbery to "Miss Sally" (Nancy Shubert) and when the sheriff is waiting for them, "Smith" becomes suspected by the gang of betraying them. Now he has the law and the gang to consider as he tries to identify the killer. Sadly, the version I saw was colourised - a practice that ought to be banned by the Geneva Convention - and it robbed the production of much of it's soul; but the dialogue is quite pacy, Yakima Canutt excels in the fisticuffs department and the story is actually quite solid.
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★ 5 / 10
"You know we ought to give up this racket though, gonna lead us both to a rope necktie one of these days."
classicsoncall
If my count is correct, this is the eleventh Lone Star Film starring John Wayne that I've seen, and it may be the best of the bunch. Not that it doesn't have…
If my count is correct, this is the eleventh Lone Star Film starring John Wayne that I've seen, and it may be the best of the bunch. Not that it doesn't have it's share of gaffs, but it was entertaining and had some humor to lighten the load. Perhaps it was Armand Schaefer's directing hand that accounts for my preference over the ones done by Robert North Bradbury and Harry Fraser.
With no pun intended, this could have been an episode of "Alias Smith and Jones". Wayne's character is John Brant, escaped from prison for a murder he didn't commit; while making his getaway from the sheriff, he uses the old breathe through a reed trick to remain underwater. When he surfaces to find an outlaw waiting, he hesitates giving his name, whereby "Bob Jones" begins calling him "John Smith". Lane Chandler shares virtually equal screen time with Wayne in this oater, as the outlaw who committed the crime for which Wayne's character is being hunted.
Yakima Canutt is on hand as the outlaw gang leader, and his stunt work in the film is interesting to watch. The most daring one (as Brant) is when he's covered by a pile of brush and is positioned to grab the underside of a stagecoach to get on board, while the horses have to carefully straddle him in his prone position. For me, that was a sit up and take notice scene, one that cries out for a "how they made this movie" follow up.
Other scenes weren't half as daring, in fact there were two flying horse mounts that almost missed, but with a low budget production that didn't believe in do-overs, they stayed in the film. However there's a great sequence when (again as Brant) Yak jumps a hitching post and one horse to land on another horse. It's a good thing the horses cooperated.
Since I mentioned the use of humor earlier, I'll note a particular scene when Smith and Jones go shopping at the general store, where they both eye up the pretty Sally Blake (Nancy Shubert) for the first time. With a handful of packages each, they manage to break each other's sack of eggs creating a mess. I guess that's why they came up with egg cartons.
If you're paying attention, you'll note that when "Smith" gets dressed up to pay a visit to Sally, he removes his old shirt to put on a new one. In the story line, he was shot some two weeks earlier in the left shoulder, but that area shows no sign of damage at all. Could Wayne have been that quick a healer? In the same scene, and the only time I've ever seen it done, Wayne's character dabs his fingers into the grease of a frying pan to slick back his hair - where's the Vitalis when you need it!
For anyone who's a fan and seen a handful of Wayne's Lone Star films, you'll know how this one ends. Not so much that Smith's name is cleared and the outlaws are brought to justice, but in the fact that John Wayne's character gets the girl. It happens virtually every time, and this one fades on Smith/Brant and Sally in a smooch behind his ten gallon hat.
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