The Lawless Frontier

Plot synopsis:
The movie opens with a family shooting from the window of their home, as they are robbed of their cattle. John Tobin (John Wayne) arrives home later that night and discovers his family killed and their cattle missing. Tobin sets out in search of Pandro Zanti (Earl Dwire), the local bandito, for all appearances a stereotypical Mexican outlaw, though the script is twice careful to tell us he is half white and half Apache and only pretends to be Mexican.
Zanti plans to kidnap Ruby (Sheila Terry) for his lusty needs. This is an unusual villainous trait for 1930s matinee Westerns, aimed at young audiences who expected villains to be claim jumpers and killers, not rapists. Ruby and her father, Dusty (George "Gabby" Hayes), hightail it out of there before she falls victim of the killer, escaping by a clever ruse (hiding in a large gunny sack) in which Ruby almost that drowns in a river. Tobin, tracking his family's killers, rescues the sack containing Ruby, and she, Dusty, and Tobin join forces.
Sheriff Luke Williams (Jack Rockwell) immediately takes credit for capturing Zanti when Tobin brings him in; he also arrests Tobin for the murder of Dusty, who took a knife in the back and collapsed. Later it is discovered Dusty only received a superficial wound and was knocked out. The sheriff, however, makes a series of mistakes, including handcuffing a bad guy's boot to a bed, so that all he has to do is take off his boot to escape, especially when Tobin made of point of telling Williams that Zanti can probably get loose.
A chase across the desert, partly on foot, ensues, with Tobin going after Zanti. The villain drinks from a desert watering hole, but in his fatigued state he does not see the sign marked "Poison. Do not drink." He dies soon after. With the chief villain now out of the picture, there is more hard riding and shooting, as Ruby and Tobin flee from Zanti's gang. When the happy ending finally arrives, Tobin becomes the new sheriff, replacing the inept Williams.

Tags: murder

Review:
"The Lawless Frontier" is another of John Wayne's Lone Star westerns released in the 1933-35 period.
As in many of the other entries in the series, this one was written and directed by Robert N.
Bradbury (who was Bob Steele's father by the way.) Again the cast is made up mostly from the "Lone Star Stock Company" of players.The plot has young John Tobin (Wayne) arriving at his father's ranch just after he has been killed by a gang of rustlers headed by bandit Pandro Zanti (Earl Dwire) and his gang.
Zanti, who for what it is worth, is half Apache, half white, is posing as a Mexican outlaw complete with accent.Zanti comes upon the small ranch of Dusty (George Hayes) and his comely young grand daughter Ruby (Sheila Terry), and decides to take the girl unto himself.
Arriving just as Zanti is about to murder Dusty and carry off Ruby, Tobin arrives and joins forces with Dusty to bring the bandits to justice.
Into the mix rides Sheriff Luke Williams (Jack Rockwell) who is also in pursuit of the bandits.
In true "B" western fashion, the good guys win out over the baddies and guess who gets the girl.As in most of Wayne's Lone Star Westerns, the level is raised somewhat by the expert stunt work of the legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt.
He jumps a horse over a cliff and performs several horse falls and riding stunts in this one, as well as playing the part of Dwire's henchman Joe.In the world of poverty row quickies, re-takes almost never happened.
Watch the scene where Wayne chases and takes down Dwire.
As they get up out of the dust, Wayne's gun and holster suddenly switch from his right side to his left and back to the right again as he mounts his horse.George Hayes was still a couple of years away from his grizzled old sidekick of "Windy/Gabby".
In this film though he looks like Gabby and sounds like Gabby but plays it straight.
John Wayne was still learning his trade at this point but if you watch closely you can catch glimpses of his future on-screen persona emerging.Average "B" western lifted a notch or two by the excellent stunt work..
So what can you say about a film that has the villain hamming it up with a lousy Mexican accent, an opening that has an atrocious editing job(mixing day and night footage in the same scene)and a dumb sheriff who wants to arrest the wrong man and botches his handcuffing of the real villain?
The chase scenes actually are quite good, with realistic falls from horseback by the girl and the villain in separate sequences.
Once you get past the horrendous opening, Archie Stout's photography is pretty good for a B movie.
I especially liked the desert foot-chase scene, with the towering basalt cliffs of Red Rock Canyon in the background.
All told, the action sequences and sometimes stunning photography kept this and other John Wayne potboilers from being dull and gave depression-era audiences their money's worth, which was what made B westerns so popular in the first place.
Hayes to Wayne, "I got a girl in the sack, and I can't swim.".
Secret passages, dynamite explosions, lots of hard riding, and the great team of Hayes and Wayne, so what else can a front-row kid turned old geezer ask for.
Okay, the plot's got more crazy twists than a corkscrew and Earl Dwire's Mexican accent is the worst until Larry Storch's Gunfever (1958), but who cares.
It's Wayne at his likable peak and Hayes's Gabby is about three-quarters complete.
Some great stunts, as expected from a cast that includes maestro Yakima Canutt, along with a leading lady who really can ride (one bad trip-wire stunt, my only complaint).
Watch for the unexpected and humorous twist when Wayne takes a short-cut to nail Dwire.
The most die-hard worshippers of John Wayne will cringe when they watch The Lawless Frontier.
Earl Dwire plays a halfbreed white and Indian who for reasons that are not explained, pretends he's a Mexican, hokey accent and all.
Dwire sounds like the Frito Bandito of advertising fame back in the day.He and his gang happen upon Gabby Hayes and his daughter Sheila Terry.
They really don't have anything worth robbing, but Dwire just wants an excuse to kidnap Terry and have his way with her.
Where they happen to meet John Wayne who's on the trail of the bandits.
They also run into one very stupid sheriff who believes Wayne is one of the bandits.
Again for reasons I can't quite fathom.It was a tough way to earn a living grinding out horse operas like these for the Duke.
John's parents are killed by a renegade bandit, played to the hilt by perennial bad guy, Earl Dwire.
Dwire injures Hayes, who joins with John to bring him and his gang to justice.The local sheriff, Jack Rockwell, is convinced that John's one of the gang, and when Hayes is shot, arrests John for the shooting.There are the usual chases, gun battles, and fights that hallmark these "B" Westerns.
There is one extended walking scene where you can see the Duke perfecting his special walk that became a trademark.An excellent stunt has John riding a log down a large drainage ditch.
Pretty amazing, and not without danger to the actor.Beware though, the DVD copy looks as if they took the print from an Extended Play (EP) VHS copy.
Very disappointing, but, a classic from John Wayne..
John Wayne and Gabby Hayes team up to take on bandit and (for some unexplained reason) fake Mexican, Pandro Zanti.
Anyway, Wayne is out for revenge because Zanti killed his parents in the film's opening scene.
Gabby Hayes also has a pretty daughter, played by Sheila Terry.
Hayes and Terry live in a ramshackle old place yet they manage to have a secret passageway behind a cabinet.
As with most of the B westerns Wayne did for Lone Star around this time, the highlight is the stuntwork of Yakima Canutt.
One of John Wayne's poorest; a textbook in how NOT to edit a film..
This is probably Wayne's poorest movie; at least the poorest in which he had a starring role.
John Wayne must have cringed every time it was mentioned!
Pretty poor--but I don't think much of the problem was the fault of the film makers.
I assume this was NOT how the film was originally released--as even for a low-budget B-movie it was pretty shabby.
The instruments are new and very electronic, the music was used indiscriminately (and often inappropriately) and it was the exact same track used in many John Wayne B-westerns--exactly the same!
It was just dreadful but you can't blame the people at Lone Star Pictures who made the film."The Lawless Frontier" was a below average Wayne outing--mostly due to the terribly dumb Sheriff--no one can be that dumb or incompetent!
But, a dumb villain and Sheriff, a stabbing that somehow leaves Gabby feeling a-o.k. and some choppy elements to the film make this very tough to watch.
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.
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.
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.
You have to be a diehard John Wayne fan to watch some of these lonestar productions he did early in his career.
In this one it's difficult to tell what's going on most of the time and it's laugh out loud funny as they keep riding back and forth on their horses about the last 15 minutes of the film.
Twice would have been suffice but it felt like they cut back and forth to them riding on their horses about a million times (which they do a lot in Wayne's Lonestar production films, but it seems the most in this one).
A fake-Mexican bandit plots to have Gabby Hayes killed so that he could step in and "save the day" for Gabby's daughter, thus making her one of his conquests.
Luckily, she overhears their plans and John Wayne is nearby.
Unlucky for Wayne, the local sheriff is a stubborn dummy who immediately suspects him of being one of the bandits!This is one of the best and faster-paced of Wayne's Lone Star vehicles, with lots of action and stunts, great locations, and a colorful ruthless villain played nicely by Earl Dwire.I don't know where all this bad editing everyone is complaining about went, but I didn't witness it.
Oh, there are many worse Wayne movies.
This movie is edited poorly but it has a campy element that makes watching it enjoyable.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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..
The one scene that I think is great is where JW calls for his dad and forces open the door into a darkened cabin then lights a match showing his own face.
It seems to be the case with many of these early westerns made on tight schedules and budgets that talent was there, just not given the time or money to flourish.I liken them to the difference between a sketch artist and a portrait painter.
I think that's when I realized you really have to practice the little things to truly finesse them.Spoiler spoiler******************************* *******************************Trivia question from this movie.Did John Wayne ever use a body board to hydroplane on water??
Skeleton Style??So maybe not a great movie but it does has some nifty scenes in it..
One of the best of Wayne's Lone Star films is hurt only by a lack of music.
John Wayne's father is killed by a half breed cattle rustler and his gang.
Wayne gives chase and ends up confused for the same bad guy by a sheriff looking into the attack on a girl and her grandfather.
One of the best of Wayne's Lone Star Westerns.
It starts at the start and runs all of the way to the end with no side trips into silliness or romance (Many of these films get side tracked for a third or more of the running time where it distracts from the main narrative thrust).
There is a really good kicker towards the end that makes the film worth seeing.
If the film has any flaw it's that the film is lacking a music score which makes the pacing seem off, its not since the film tears through its 50 odd minute run time at a good clip.
If you're going to try one of the Lone Star films, try this one..
"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 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.
I didn't even believe his accent.Surprisingly, Wayne was not good in this movie.
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.