Paradise Canyon (1935)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Not copyrighted. A Lone Star Western, released through Monogram in the U.S.A.: 20 July 1935. No New York opening. U.K. release through Exclusive: November 1936 (sic). 52 minutes. Alternative title: PARADISE RANCH.SYNOPSIS: On the trail of counterfeiters, a government agent joins a medicine show.NOTES: This was Wayne's last official Lone Star. In his next film "Westward Ho" - made for Republic - he continued to play the character "John Wyatt".COMMENT: The last and least interesting of Wayne's Lone Star westerns. True, it has a bit of action but all of it is thoroughly undermined by unimaginative staging and poor direction. A dive by horse and rider over a cliff should have been a highlight, but it is shot from such a pedestrian angle that all the impact of the stunt is lost. There are no running inserts at all, with every chase filmed from uninteresting fixed-angle positions. Even the background scenery is drab and there is no music whatever to generate excitement. The opening chase after the medicine show wagon is ho-hum bland the first time around. But then it is repeated with but a slight variation. The constant cutting between weak sound effects of horses' hooves pounding along and the fuzzy motor roaring is nothing short of irritating. And yet it's given a second run! Incredible!Yakima Canutt has a major role. He's the chief heavy in fact. But good to see him though it is, he doesn't do any stuntwork to speak of. In fact his fist fights with Wayne are among the weakest and phoniest we've ever seen.The real star of the film is not Wayne at all. Here he takes a back seat to the voluble, endlessly verbose, uninterruptedly garrulous Earle Hodgins. No wonder Wayne seems somewhat reticent and even lackluster. Miss Burns is a moderately attractive heroine, but the rest of the players are a write-off, particularly Gino Corrado, a most unconvincing Italian-accented Mexican rurale captain, who sports the most ridiculous prop hat imaginable.I was wrong when I said no music. There are in fact two songs, sung by the Texas Two. It says much for the excitements of the rest of the movie when I say with confidence that these two songs are the most entertaining parts of the whole film. In fact, if Paradise Canyon is fair sample of Mr Pierson's work, he is most definitely a director to avoid at all costs.

John Wayne grew as a screen performer during his days starring at the cheapo production company Lone Star. It's a shame the last film he made there turned out one of the worst.Government agent John Wyatt (Wayne) is sent on a mission to find a pair of suspected counterfeiters. One, Doc Carter (Earle Hodgins) runs a travelling medicine show selling gussied-up hard liquor as a "Famous Indian Remedy." The other, Curly Joe Gale (Yakima Canutt), is hiding out in Mexico, where he runs his illegal trade. The government suspects the two may still be in cahoots."Well, that's a new one for me," Wyatt tells his boss. "Looks like I'm going to have to join a medicine show."It's the one new wrinkle on what by now had become the Wayne formula at Lone Star. Once again he has a secret identity, once again he will meet a charming girl to bond with (Marion Burns as Doc's daughter Linda) and once again he will butt heads with Canutt when the crook crosses paths with his less crooked partner Doc and decides to get him out of the way for good.Director Carl L. Pierson may not be Wayne's regular helmer at Lone Star, Robert N. Bradbury, but he employs the same kind of flat storytelling devices and obvious padding. The film begins with Wyatt riding up to a town and discovering Doc Carter just rolled out under a cloud of community suspicion. The routine is repeated twice more before Wyatt finally links up with Doc and joins the show.An assortment of time-killing devices follow, including a lengthy section where Doc delivers his spiel, introduces a pair of guitar- playing singers who perform a couple of songs, then turns things over to his new attraction, "Cowboy John," who shoots targets around Linda. This amounts to a successful courting ritual for Wyatt, leaving us to wonder what kind of father lets a stranger fire bullets an inch from his daughter's head.A drunk one, I guess. Much of the humor involves how Doc Carter is his own best customer. In between pulls from the bottle, his tedious spiels suck away whatever passes for energy. As John W Chance points out in another review here, you get the feeling Pierson thought Hodgins was going to be in pictures long after the world forgot about this Wayne guy.There's also Canutt as the bad guy, a legendary stuntman who was no actor. The film has him try to bribe Wyatt to make Doc leave town, then resort to lame threats when Wyatt refuses."Alright, stranger, then I'll deal from the bottom of the deck," Curly Joe replies in his flat, wheedling voice. "You and that show be out of town tonight, or I'll be there looking for you." Eventually the criminal mastermind settles on having his henchmen take Doc and Linda to a cave where he can laugh and wait for Wyatt to show up before shooting them.There's also a number of needlessly cruel horse falls that punctuate long chase scenes. All of this is by-the-numbers Lone Star time kill, and hopefully fed some hungry dogs better than it does our need for excitement.The most disappointing thing about this film is Wayne himself. While he managed to show some real talent in his Lone Star work, here he's very clearly going through the motions and watching the clock. With such a dull supporting cast and a lame story, you can't blame him. Maybe he was thrown playing love scenes with an actress who had the same first name he did.Wayne's Lone Star films have some good moments, and at least one film worth recommending on its own merits, "Sagebrush Trail." Unfortunately, this one only shows why they called it "Poverty Row."

A government agent (John Wayne) goes undercover as part of a traveling medicine show to stop a counterfeiting operation. For awhile, he believes the head of the show, "Doc Carter" (Earl Hodgins), is the head of the operation. His belief is backed up with the fact that "Carter" spent the last decade in jail.Now, he has to go after the real criminals into Mexico and bring them to justice.I have seen some John Wayne movies via Hulu in the last couple of weeks, and this is easily one of the better ones the site currently has.The acting in this movie is very decent, and pretty believable all around. Not one performance was weak in fact. You had good chemistry between the main players, and none of them looked as if they were just there to get paid.Wayne stands out as the leading man in this film. His presence is one of the strongest in the film. This was his last movie for Monogram Pictures, and it's a very good send-off for "The Duke." As for other performers, they all did pretty good performances for the amount of screen time they had.Some of the supporting cast were poorly written in this movie. There are two members of the traveling medicine show who basically were there to perform a couple of songs, and deliver a few lines. They were there mostly for show, and not much else.There is quite a few action scenes in this movie, but nothing too spectacular. You get one horse chase, and some gunfighting, but nothing memorable.One thing that limits this movie is the length of it. This makes some subplots rushed. There is a taste of a romance between Wayne and Marion Burns, who plays "Carter's" daughter and performer in the medicine show. It didn't have time to blossom because the main plot had to be advanced.When the story moves over the border into Mexico, I felt the characters introduced at that point were not used well. They added little, if anything, to the plot.One big problem was the audio. Due to the movie being 75 years old, the audio just didn't hold up. The audio makes it hard to understand what is being said at times. At some points, the people were pretty muffled for a few seconds. You could understand what was being said, but you had to strain to hear what they were saying.I would say that this could be something to watch if you can catch it online on sites like Hulu, or on television. Only rent the movie if you are a die-hard John Wayne fan.

Yakima Canutt and his gang of counterfeiters try to run his former partner Dr. Carter and his medicine show out of town before the "doctor" recognizes him and quite possibly blows the whistle on Canutt's involvement in a recent string of bogus bills. Luckily for Carter, undercover lawman John Wayne is the show's new trick shooter.The last film Wayne made for Lone Star/ Monogram Pictures, this is more light-hearted and less action packed than other entries. It's still good fun with a few decent action scenes and stunts.The best thing about it is the wonderful scene featuring the medicine show in all it's glory, including the sales pitch, music, and a trick shooting demonstration.