Reviewer:
Poohbah70
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December 29, 2019
Subject:
John Wayne - They Don't Use Six Shooters in Canada
This is the 9th in the Lone Star/Paul Mavern Productions series, directed by westerns veteran Robert N. Bradbury (father of westerns star Bob Steele. Its a film with an unusual plot and interesting and different locations suggestive of Canadian pine forests, rather than the American southwest. The plot has Wayne in Canada to find the daughter of his father's friend's estranged brother. Heading north by train he just happens to meet his best friend, Noah Beery, Jr. (Wabi) from his college days. In short order, he becomes involved in a murder Wabi is framed for, escapes by jumping into a river and finding an abandoned cabin where he discovers a map to the gold mine of the man's daughter he is looking for. Reaching the town Wabi lives in, they go to the general store run by Noah Beery, Sr. and Wayne meets Verna Hillie, his love interest in this film and then has the map discovered by one of the bad guys, Earl Dwire, here with a laughable French-Canadian accent. The next day The next day Wayne and Beery, Jr. are caught by a Royal Mounted Police officer. And, so it goes non-stop to the end, when Wayne paddles off with Hillie. Aside from the silly accents and the lack of typical gun play, it is non-stop action.
Reviewer:
BardOfMilling
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November 3, 2013
Subject:
Great Entertainment
John Wayne always provided a good action show, even this film which was early in his career.
Reviewer:
djuma
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April 25, 2011
Subject:
A "Canadian Western"
This is a fairly good entry in the John Wayne- Lone Star series of low-budget westerns made in the 1930s. Between 1930, when Wayne had his first big break with the lead in the excellent Raoul Walsh western "The Big Trail, and 1939, when he had his second, and star-making break, in John Ford's "Stagecoach," he made a zillion of these lower-grade films. This is not to say they were all bad. They lacked the polished scripts of the bigger-budgeted films, but they had great action, and some good character actors. This one has the father and son team of Noah Beery and Noah Beery, Jr. Beery senior, brother of Wallace, was one of the screen's great bad guys. He had a personality reminiscent of Bluto in the Popeye cartoons. His son usually played good guys, and acted way into the TV era- such as in James Garner's "The Rockford Files."
This film has some outstanding, beautiful photograpy by master cameraman Archie Stout. He would later be the cameraman on "Beau Geste," "Fort Apache," and a number of John Ford- John Wayne films. He really makes California look like Canada in this one.
It's interesting seeing Wayne in a western set in Canada. He gets involved with crooked French trappers, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He even becomes a deputized Mountie at one point. It is Hollywood Canada, and I'm sure Canadians would be quite aware of that. Wayne must spend more time in the water in this than in just about any other of his films. He jumps off a train bridge into a river, jumps off a cliff- two times- into another river, and saves a Mountie from going over a waterfall. Wayne and stuntmen Yakima Canutt and Eddie Parker really paid their dues on this one. And Wayne paid his dues with all these low-budget westerns, before he hit the big time with "Stagecoach." It must have seemed to him to take forever getting there.