The worst of the Lone Star John Wayne westerns is a real drag to watch, whether you like John Wayne or just have better things to do with 50 minutes.That Pedro Zanti (Earl Dwire) is one crafty villain. We are told he is half-white, half-Apache, but pretends to be a Mexican for some reason, which means he imitates Ricardo Montalbán even when issuing orders to his gang during a cattle-rustling job. He's so crafty he even fixes it so the theft takes place both at day and at night, depending on which camera is shooting. He speaks English fluently, yet is undone in the end because they don't write warning signs in bad accents.The nominal hero of the piece, John Tobin (John Wayne), is the son of one of Zanti's victims, as seen in the opening, when he discovers his dead father after lighting a match. Wayne grimaces as if he had a bad meal, which is about all the emotion he bothers to project. You think you are getting a revenge film, but after pretty Sheila Terry shows up needing rescue in a nearby river, that element gets flung by the wayside as Tobin decides to help her out. Luckily for him, this is a film chock-a-full of bad coincidences, so he can bag Zanti and the girl without as much as a cutaway shot.Dwire, a solid performer in other Lone Star films, narrows his eyes and smiles a lot, looking ridiculously out-of-place in his charro outfit and spindly legs.Everyone seems to be sleepwalking in this one. Director Robert N. Bradbury aims for the youngsters, with hidden doors and lots of shooting and dangerous-looking horse falls. About the only half- interesting plot element to be found in "The Lawless Frontier" is a sheriff character who doesn't much care about doing his job, announcing "I don't trust nobody!" He blames Tobin for everything, steals credit for Zanti's capture, and stupidly allows Zanti to escape by handcuffing his boot to a bedpost, as if he thinks the boot is part of his foot. The sheriff is so stupidly incompetent, he's the one character in this film that almost works."He started off alright, but he's sure gone to seed," says a fellow named Dusty played by George (not yet "Gabby") Hayes.You can't say the same for "Lawless Frontier," not after its confused day-for-night-for-day opener. It never goes to seed but stays bad right up to the silly ending where Tobin manages to trap a gang of bad guys with a crate of dynamite that just happens to be lying around. I guess it gave the little nippers a bang, and let the adults in the theater know it was time to wake up.

"John Tobin" (John Wayne) is on the hunt of the killer of his father (Earl Dwire), who kidnaps a young woman (Sheila Terry). Now, John has to save the young woman, while trying to prove he is not a member of the outlaw's gang to the bumbling sheriff, who also accuses him for killing the girl's father.This is one of the worst 1930's movies I've seen. I spent more time looking away from my computer screen than watching the actual movie.The first problem is the length of the film. It completely rushed the story, which was hard to follow at times. It also gave no chance of the characters to develop.Everybody in the cast seemed to have been forced together, and did not get the chance to develop any chemistry.A good chunk of this movie deals with "Tobin" chasing the villain. In fact, a good chunk of the entire 50 minutes was a horse chase. The villain was horrible, and I did not feel any hate toward him. I didn't even believe his accent.Surprisingly, Wayne was not good in this movie. I believe this was early in his career, and it showed. He was not leading man material in this one. He didn't even have chemistry with any of the other performers.Due to the age of this film, the audio was not great. It made the dialog nearly impossible to hear at times. There were times that you couldn't understand anything that was said. You also had the source of the sound go to almost a whisper as it moved away from the microphone.If you are a John Wayne fan, check this out if you see it on the Westerns channel, but only if there is nothing else on.

What distinguishes some of the 'Lone Star' films (and many others in western and adventure films of the early thirties) was their lack of what we recognize as formulaic story telling. To be sure they had good vs. evil (the basic element of any Western), boy meets girl and some stock characters, such as the old rancher and his beautiful daughter or grand daughter, and sometimes the evil banker or other businessman, but the way the action played out was often different from film to film.'The Lawless Frontier' features Earl Dwire in his big star turn (not) as (for some inexplicable reason) Pandro Zanti, a 'half Apache, half American posing as a Mexican who speaks the language fluently.' His biggest posing as a Mexican seemed to be his outrageous mariachi clothes. The only plot seems to be that he wants to steal Ruby, the granddaughter of "Old Dusty" (Gabby Hayes). When meeting her for the first time, Dwire gives her a long once over look that puts him in the big leagues with sexual predators. You'd think that because the opening scene shows Zanti killing John (Wayne) Tobin's father off camera, it would play a bigger part in the film. It doesn't. Too much chasing back and forth between heroes and villains.We get many good stunts, though, from Yakima Canutt, including pulling Ruby up on his horse when he rides by, jumping on 'renegades' and knocking them off their horses, a horse leap off a cliff into a lake, and even the same slide down the sluice sequence that was in "The Lucky Texan" (1934), although this time the Mighty Yak uses a body surfing log instead of straddling a tree bough, and its inclusion is just as illogical this time too, since they are in a desert.The high point is clearly John Wayne's measured and methodical well photographed walk across the desert after the fleeing and stumbling Zanti with those fantastic basalt cliffs of Red Rock Canyon (seen in countless serials, westerns and science fiction 'moon' movies) framed behind him. No final gun duel at fifty paces with the heroine running from the wooden steps of the bar to embrace and kiss the conquering hero in this movie! When John Wayne finally catches up with him, Zanti drinks poisoned water from a waterhole and dies.After a couple too many chase sequences, Zantai's gang is finally captured in Dusty's cabin, emerging one by one from behind a swivel cabinet that apparently leads to a canyon, now blocked off by having been dynamited. No riding off into the sunset or obligatorily kissing the girl: The final shot is Ruby, now Mrs. John Tobin, on the telephone to the now Sheriff John Tobin, "What would Sheriff Tobin like for dinner?" The film also has poor lighting and editing at the beginning, the pacing is slow, some parts with the sheriff cause it to drag, and the horse chases fill up the film. So despite the different and unusual elements, it comes off as one of the weaker Lone Stars.

Even die hard John Wayne fans will have to concede that this film is a mess. Wayne's character, John Tobin is after the gang that killed his parents, led by half Apache, half white renegade Pandro Zanti (Earl Dwire), posing as a Mexican. There are almost too many silly plot points to count, but those that stand out include Sheriff Williams (Jack Rockwell) cuffing a captured Zanti around his boot, so all Zanti has to do to get free is remove his boot! Tobin's friend Dusty (George pre-Gabby Hayes) takes a thrown knife in the back, and comes back good as new for the rest of the story. In a chase scene, Tobin rides a makeshift log flume through a drainage trough surrounded by log walls in the middle of a desert, and missing his mark, chases (actually walks after) Zanti on foot through the desert. Zanti seeks relief and drinks from a pool of water, but OOPS!, he didn't see the sign above the waterhole that states "Don't Drink Poison". As Zanti collapses dead, Tobin resumes his chase after the remainder of the gang, and captures the whole lot by blowing up a rock wall that seals a secret passage into Dusty's cabin - how convenient.In the closing scene, the new Sheriff Tobin is seen on the phone talking to the new Mrs. Tobin (Sheila Terry), Dusty's daughter Ruby, who earlier in the film was a kidnap target of Zanti's gang. Apparently, the studio was intent on Wayne's getting the girl in virtually every film they made with him, as this type of ending is completely predictable for almost all of Lone Star's films.