Texas Terror (1935)

Touches You

Please don't spend money on this.

Excellent adaptation.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

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.

Under the mistaken belief that he killed his best friend, John Wayne quits his job as sheriff and leaves town to become a desert tramp. A year later, he cleans up his act in order to help his friend's daughter with the horse ranch she inherited. The two fall in love but the real murderer plans on ruining the ranch in order to take her away!Texas Terror is a likable entry in Lone Star's series of Saturday matinée westerns starring Wayne. It has a well-written script with some decent melodrama to go along with the action and has one of the better love stories of the series.Near the beginning, this gives the viewer an irresistible chance to get a look at Wayne in a full beard and dirty clothes. That's certainly something I've never seen before.

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)!

Wayne portrays a Texas sheriff at around the turn of the 20th century who is framed for the murder of his best friend. His best friends daughter finds out about what is believed to be The Sherriff's brutal act, yet Wayne finds out the truth and brings the real killers to justice. Kudos to the Duke!