Texas Terror (1935)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Beautiful, moving film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The Lone Star westerns John Wayne made for Monogram Pictures became his cut-rate purgatory before stardom. Some go down easier than others; "Texas Terror" mostly just goes down.Sheriff John Higgins (Wayne) is fooled into believing he shot his best friend in a gunfight with robbers. It's decided the friend, an old man who happened to be carrying a wad of dough, was part of the robber gang, so Higgins is off the hook. He turns in his badge anyway."When duty makes it necessary to take the life of a man like Old Dan Matthews, then I'm through with duty," Higgins declares."Texas Terror" is the kind of movie where things happen abruptly. Coincidences abound unexplained. People deliver long exposition in the form of conversation, stiffly and at one point, staring directly at the camera: "I'll be so happy to get home. You see, I'm Bess Matthews, and I own the Lazy M," a woman tells a driver after he has presumably been driving her awhile.Bess (Lucile Browne) is the daughter of the slain man, and for some reason new sheriff Ed Williams (George Hayes, not yet going by his better-known moniker "Gabby") decides Higgins is just the man to help Bess get Pa's ranch up and running. Never mind the fact he supposedly killed her father. Is this sort of thing supposed to be a secret forever, or does Ed think they will laugh it off when she finds out?Wayne's Lone Star pictures were mostly sub-par films, often worse than that. But most of them do feature Wayne coming into his own as a solid anchor performer. Here, however, he seems flustered and bored. At one point, when talking to the second male lead, villain Joe Dickson (LeRoy Mason), he seems to forget the character's name, awkwardly stopping mid-line.Director Robert N. Bradbury plays with spatial reality a lot here. In the beginning, we see Higgins right behind the robbers, even shooting one off his horse. The wounded man stumbles into a house where Dickson shoots Dan Matthews. This would have been heard by Higgins, you'd think, except somehow now the guy is ten minutes behind, so he can be led to believe he shot Matthews himself in a later battle, never mind the corpse is lying in the middle of a room, not near a window.The film does have some grace notes. A milking contest brings some country charm, with lovable Fern Emmett as Bess's Aunt Martha going toe-to-toe with a competitive but amiable old coot. You also have a scene where rustlers threatening the Lazy M are set upon by local Indians who act at the behest of their friend, Higgins. The Lone Star productions were death on stunt horses, but nobody in the 21st century can fault them on their handling of Native Americans. Throughout Wayne's run there Indians are depicted as his wise and loyal friends.Whatever the intentions on view, the movie is so draggy, unbelievable, and lifeless I struggled to sit through it, short as it was. Even Hayes seems less invested in his character this time around. Wayne looks formidably scruffy for a while after leaving the sheriff's job, even sporting a beard for a while, but he is hemmed in by the same exposition-laden dialogue that does in everyone else. "Texas Terror" wound up more like Texas Tedium to me.

This B-western begins with John Wayne as a town's sheriff. However, following a robbery, Wayen chases the baddies and thinks he's accidentally shot and killed an old friend--not knowing that the leader of the gang actually killed the man. Saddened by the death, he decides to quit the job and become a recluse...for a while. Eventually, he gets his act together and eventually unravels the mystery--saving the day.Compared to other Wayne films of the era, this one is about average--entertaining but with a few problems here and there. The one big problem for me was the use of stunts--which were usually the highpoint of these films. Instead of staging new stunts, they sloppily took clips from other Wayne films and stuck them in--less than seamlessly. For example, though the grass is short and they are in a semi-wooded area, when baddies are shot, they fall in very high grass with no trees about them! Sloppy...and obviously recycled. Still, the rest of the film is breezy light entertainment--what you'd expect from such an unpretentious film.A couple things to look for is a particularly bad job of acting and directing when the heroin enters the film. She talks directly to the camera and her delivery is less than magical...in fact, it's craptastic. Also, look for Gabby Hayes as the new sheriff. Unlike many of his other western roles, here he wears his dentures and sounds very erudite--without that 'old coot' voice you usually expect from him. This isn't too surprising, as in these Wayne westerns, Hayes experimented a lot with his characters--even sometimes playing bad guys or action heroes...of sorts.

I’d always resisted watching John Wayne’s 1930s Western programmers (some of them have been shown on both local and Cable TV over the years) – but, some time ago, my father had purchased a bargain-basement PD triple-bill featuring two of these (plus Clark Gable’s official debut, THE PAINTED DESERT [1931]) and I thought I’d check them out in time for The Duke’s 100th Anniversary. Incidentally, a few other early Wayne stuff is available from my local DVD rental outlet and, now that I’m in the vein for his films, I may get them as well...Anyway, having watched two such oaters in quick succession, I can say that they’re harmless and enjoyable enough – but, at the same time, charmingly naïve. Curiously, some years back, I had rented a number of PD Westerns and these included a couple of Randolph Scott titles from this same era – TO THE LAST MAN (1933) and ROCKY MOUNTAIN MYSTERY (1935): they share a connection with the two Wayne films I watched in that one was directed by Bradbury, while the other was adapted from a Zane Grey novel; the Scotts, therefore, are similar but also slightly superior.The plot of this one is pretty straightforward, but Wayne is a likable lead: he plays a sheriff who ends up accused of killing his best friend, resigns, meets and falls for the dead man’s daughter (whose ‘crime’ she’s unaware of) and eventually routs the real villain (who, unsurprisingly, is also interested in the girl). The treatment is completely unassuming (it has to be when the film is a mere 50 minutes long!) – with folksy characters (acting in broad early-Talkie style, particularly the leading lady) and stunt-heavy action (with the horses involved in some incredibly hazardous falls!). Still, the extreme low-budget is evidenced by the baffling intrusion on the Western setting of contemporary contrivances – houses are equipped with telephones, characters attend a dance in dinner-jackets, and Wayne himself is made to drive a car at one point (how a cowboy ever came to understand its mechanism so quickly isn’t worth pondering about, I guess)!

I've seen this a few times now, but this was the 1st time on DVD with new digital music added to pep it up. Unfortunately it doesn't pep it up, it simply makes you wonder what the producers of the video release were thinking of in messing about with the original soundtrack. They wouldn't have been allowed to ruin 'Frankenstein' with senseless and incongruous dramatic chords sprinkled throughout, so why cheapies like this? This was a budget release, why couldn't they have spent any spare cash on eliminating the frame wobble?Big John's in good form, with lots of noble deeds to do and the usual Lone Star chases on horseback back and forth across California (not Texas) in 1934. In a case of mistaken identity the heroine says to him that she "doesn't know words vile enough to express her contempt for him". Sadly todays heroines would have no such problem! Nice to see Gabby Hayes just after his last shave!A good film for fans of the genre, not even marred by the shortness (49 minutes on this DVD) - Wayne made so many of these you'll be lucky to live long enough to see 'em all!