In the 1930s before he made it big with Stagecoach, John Wayne made a lot of low-budget B westerns. Most are entirely forgettable and some are even terrible. But the one constant in all of them was Duke's wonderful screen presence. This is one of those westerns. The plot's about an escaped convict (Wayne) who heads out west to prove his innocence by finding the man who really committed the crime he was convicted of. There's some surprisingly good stunt work in this, some of it by Duke himself. I also liked some of the twists the plot takes that keeps it from being a standard black hat vs white hat horse opera. Very good of its type.

Convicted of a murder he did not commit, John Wayne escapes from prison, hops a freight train, and heads west to find the real killer, finding himself part of a gang of armed robbers. He then tries to thwart the gang from within and convince his new best friend to give up his outlaw ways.A fun entry in Wayne's cannon of Lone Star vehicles, this has great location photography, stunts courtesy of co-star Yakima Canutt, and a rousing finish. They even managed to squeeze in a neat underwater sequence!The abandoned mine that the gang uses as their secret hideout is the much filmed cave at Bronson Canyon. Right after I watched this, I switched the channel and immediately saw it in a brand new Subaru commercial!

It was in films like Sagebrush Trail that John Wayne learned his craft, but thank the Deity he got out of doing stuff like Sagebrush Trail. The Duke has busted loose from jail, he was in the calaboose for a murder he didn't commit. He eludes a posse chasing him, but gets into the clutches of an outlaw gang headed by Yakima Canutt. It's as good a place as any to look for the man who can clear him. He doesn't realize though how lucky he got.Now granted this was a Lone Star production, not even a B film. But I would have liked to have seen just how Wayne got into the jackpot that landed him jail for murdering the lover of a married woman if he wasn't involved with her. When we do find who the murderer is that's never explained to us. Since this was for the afternoon kiddie matinée crowd maybe such things weren't delved into even before the Code came in place. Maybe it was a question of sloppy editing also. I think John Wayne's most devoted fans might like this one, I really wouldn't recommend to others, even other western fans.

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.