With a bigger budget than other movies of John Wayne's of this period, this 55 minute programmer has a more interesting story and higher production values than those others.The version I saw, on TCM had a very clean and crisp transfer and even looked like it had been restored.The story goes something like this: John Wayne travels to Canada in search of a missing miner and his daughter, but ends up a fugitive when he helps a friend who has been framed for murder to escape the law. In a deserted mountain cabin, complete with skeletons, they stumble on a treasure map. Deciding to go after the loot, they're on the run again, until a devious trapper plans to get his hands on it by posing as a mountie.There's some wonderful scenery (pity it's not later and in Technicolor) that rather takes over from the story but that's no bad thing and is a nice change from the dust and Indians of your usual western.The Duke's delivery of his lines are stilted and rather wooden but he's unsurpassed at mounting a horse whilst running - and from the back of the animal, which arguably is far more important than eloquent dialogue!Though hardly a classic and probably a bit pretty for young boys wanting 'cowboys'n'indians' action, The Trail Beyond remains quite watchable.

Like the other John Wayne B-westerns I recently saw on the Encore Channel, this one had a very modern and inappropriate music track added to it by some idiots at Fox Lorber Pictures. Why they would do this is beyond me, as the electronic instruments and how invasive the music was seriously detracted from the film. My advice is to download the public domain copy linked to IMDb instead.In the 1930s-50s, some of the series B-westerns played very fast and loose with anachronisms and continuity. Early on, you see this is the case with "Trail Beyond" because although it begins in the old West, soon you see John Wayne dressed in stylish 1930s clothes and he's riding on a contemporary train car. Considering how often Gene Autry and others also had such silly anachronisms in their films, I guess I can cut this one a little slack.Wayne is sent to Canada by a friend. It seems that long ago, this friend and his brother became estranged. Now that he's an old man he wants to patch things up with his niece--who he's never seen. Due to his age, he needs Wayne to make this trip for him. However, on the way there, Wayne meets up with another friend (a college buddy?!) who is set up for murder and he helps the guy make a getaway. That Wayne--such a helpful and swell guy! The choice of the friend and the guy who played Mr. Newsome is pretty interesting, by the way. Newsome is played by Noah Beery and the young guy set up for a killing he didn't do is Noah Beery, Jr.--who you may recognize from his stint on "The Rockford Files" in the 1970s.Once in Canada, Wayne and his friend find a cabin with skeletons inside. In addition, there is a map showing the location of a gold mine. Naturally, there is an evil gang looking for the gold as well. I say naturally because just about every Wayne B-western involves an evil gang! Soon Wayne and Jr. get involved in rescuing a pretty lady from the gang. Surprise, surprise...the woman eventually turns out to be the missing niece---one of the least surprising twists in movie history! This is so predictable and contrived--especially when just as Wayne is about to tell this pretty lady about the Uncle and his desire to make her his heir, he's interrupted! Sheesh! In the meantime, an evil lady has decided to try to assume the role of his niece.In the midst of all this gang activity and deceit, there still is a killing attributed to Beery, Jr. and the Mounties are looking for him. Unfortunately, when a Mountie does catch the pair, he turns out to be one of the gang...and a faux Mountie! But, since it's a B-movie at well under an hour in length, very soon they manage to escape along with a real Mountie. Can they find the real niece AND the gold mine AND can Beery, Jr. prove his innocence? Aside from saying that the film was set in Canada, the Mountie and a couple guys with outrageous French-Canadian accents, this is pretty much like any other Wayne B-western. However, at least the crew filmed this in a location that at least looks reasonably Canadian (at Big Bear lake in California). This is pretty surprising, as this area is about 40 miles due east of Los Angeles--and not anywhere close to the wild North! The film is decent watchable B-western entertainment. Nothing deep or sophisticated here--just a very direct film made in a quick but exciting manner. This is not one to rush out to see and it has its obvious plot deficiencies, but it is worth seeing if you enjoy films of the genre.By the way, my favorite moment in the film was near the end. When the baddie was shot, he falls down near the edge of a cliff--dead. Yet, oddly, in the next cut, he's shown falling off the cliff--as if someone ha

By now I've seen most of John Wayne's Westerns for Lone Star Productions, and this one so far ranks just above "The Lawless Frontier" as the poorest of the bunch. Interestingly they were made back to back in 1934 in about the middle of the run, both directed by Robert North Bradbury. Plot points and continuity didn't seem to mean much back then, but you know what, they're still pretty much fun to take a look at every now and then.The story has a Canadian setting for a change, featuring place names like Fort Minnetaki and Wabinosh, along with the prerequisite French accents of the villains. The two main heavies are LaRocque (Robert Frazer) and Benoit (Earl Dwire), and they even have a nasty female accomplice named Marie (Iris Lancaster), who might have been a red herring in Rod Drew's (Wayne) quest to find the missing daughter of a man who died years ago. In the movie's opening scene, the man who sets Drew on his mission surmised that his long lost niece might have been named Marie after her mother.Missing from the credits this time around are Gabby and Yak, so Noah Beery Jr. fills in as Rod Drew's buddy from college, teaming up with each other after Wabi (Beery) is framed for a murder aboard a train. Once on the run, the pair have everything they can do to remain on dry ground. Wayne's character winds up jumping into a river no less than three times including once on horseback.This is the only time I've seen Noah Beery Jr. and Sr. together in a film, though it happened a few times in their careers. The elder Beery runs a trading post in the story, along with his adopted daughter Felice (Verna Hillie). It made me wonder why Newsome (Beery Sr.) offered Marie LaFleur a job to straighten out his books instead of having Felice do it. Just one of those story points that wasn't thought out too well.Another was when Drew and Wabi find the cave with the gold from the map they found in a deserted cabin (complete with skeletons of two former partners who killed each other - nice touch!). One of the dead men from the cabin was Felice's real father, brother of the man who asked Drew to look for his niece. Along with a small sack of gold the men find, there's a photo of an adult Felice just as she appears in the story. How would her father have gotten that picture if he died before she grew up???Keep an eye on the canoe scene when Drew and Wabi leave the cabin with the rescued Mountie. When the Mountie is shot by one of the villains, he falls backwards toward Wabi, but in the very next scene he's lying in the other direction toward Drew.By the time the good guy and bad guy posses head for the finale, I wound up scratching my head as to where all those riders came from. Most of the time LaRocque had only Benoit and another henchman around, but during the shootout he had at least a half dozen. While the Mountie outpost in the middle of the Canadian wilderness only had a handful of men on hand, by the time they rode off with Drew in the lead there were probably a couple dozen riders on the chase.Well I guess that's why it's such a blast watching these early John Wayne oaters, it's fun just to catch all the goofy stuff going on, in addition to the often exciting chase scenes and horse dives off a cliff. This one also boasted some pretty impressive scenery, most notably that mountain valley view when Wabi points out the way to Wabinosh. If you stay alert, you'll also catch some pretty interesting product placement for Buffalo Lager Beer and industrial size Karo Syrup - I wonder if they had to pay for those?

For me, the movie was (a) poor but (b) fun."Poor" because the directing was lame, the dialogue was hard not to chuckle at, the fight-scenes were definitely proto, and the plot meandering.But still it was "fun" because here was young John Wayne giving it his all, jumping off cliffs, diving into every body of water he could find, and fighting Bad French Guys. And it's fun to see such a young, naive movie, so endearingly but sincerely lame, trying hard to do nothing but entertain. And for me, a lifelong lover of Mammoth Lakes, it was fun to see Crystal Crag, and a shot down at Twin Lakes from below Lake Mamie described as "a bend in the river."I just wish it had been color!