Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Bill Slocum The Lone Star John Wayne westerns are a weak series in the main; this early effort proves no exception despite a promising opening.Randy Bowers (Wayne) rides to an isolated saloon to talk to the proprietor, only to find him and two others shot to death inside. Moments later, the law arrives and takes a protesting Randy into custody. Can Randy clear his name and bring the true perpetrators to justice?"You don't look like a killer," says the proprietor's niece, in what amounts to Randy's only interrogation."Well, I'm not," he answers. "Just give me a chance. I can prove it."The opening sequence is a mini-masterpiece of mood setting. We see Randy enter the saloon, his face suddenly registering the carnage inside. In addition to the bodies, there's an open safe and a player piano still playing a happy tune. Real eyes follow him from the cut-out eyeholes of a portrait; next to the safe is a shot-up wanted poster with a warning: "Lay off sheriff, or you'll get the same thing..."But director Harry L. Fraser is pretty much out of bullets after that. Instead, we are treated to a double role by George (not yet "Gabby") Hayes, as a genial mute storeowner who secretly runs the gang of villains behind the triple murder.Why is Randy there? Why is the sheriff so quick to slip the cuffs on him? Why does the niece keep her silence about Randy's innocence? Most critically, why is the town so easily taken in by "Matt the Mute's" fake mustache, while his scowling face decorates so many wanted posters?"Randy Rides Alone" is not a film for such introspection. It's designed as a brief boys-own escape from Depression-era miseries, with many elements that would be used in other Lone Star Wayne vehicles before and after. There are secret passages, double identities, horse chases, a lazy sheriff, and a nasty henchman, the latter two played by Lone Star regulars Earl Dwire and Yakima Canutt, respectively. Randy manages to win the girl's affections, another trope.There are moments you feel like Fraser was having fun with the formula. The opening is unusually effective, and watching Hayes finally tire of his "Matt the Mute" charade in a showdown with the niece (Alberta Vaughn) with his last line ("No one makes a fool of Marvin Black") has a silly zest about it.What kills the film is the outrageously slow pacing. Others point out the scenes where we have to wait for "Matt" to write out one of his messages, but the whole film moves like that, slowly and with a kind of counter-energy. Fraser may have had a talent for mood-setting, but directing for action seems beyond him. The final showdown is a major letdown this way. We see the villainous outlaws surrounded in their hideout, and have been told the area is littered with hidden dynamite. Sounds promising, but the shooting fails to trigger any explosions and is over quickly while Randy chases Marvin/Matt for a final scene that strains credulity. Instead of escaping, Hayes' character goes back to the saloon to get the loot he believes is there, only to get a faceful of splinters for his trouble.At least Wayne is in good form, and seems to be having fun in this B- picture outing. That's more than I could say for me.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . during the first twelve months of a self-appointed American Taliban censoring EVERY line of dialog and image BEFORE normal people could watch (all under the Thumb of the most extensive ring of THOUSANDS of child sex predators that has ever stalked U.S. Innocents!), more than half of many movies are left out, including much of RANDY RIDES ALONE. Only the most Gifted Reconstructionists are able to exercise their intellect and fill in the gaps at this late date, so here goes: "Sally Rogers" is the Madame of "The Half Way House," a bordello MORE isolated than Nevada's infamous Mustang Ranch, where so many of Today's NBA players hang out. Since FDR's banking laws did not cater to the Criminal Class as do Today's, Ms. Rogers must keep her $30,000 cash profits (about one and a half Trumps, adjusted for inflation) made off her working girls on the Half Way House premises. When rival crime-lord "Marvin Black" rubs out Sally's bouncer and several of her regular johns, she turns to John Wayne to save the local Hen House. However, Wayne wants Sally all for himself, so he arranges to have Marvin blown up with the Half Way House.

FightingWesterner John Wayne enters a saloon to find a player piano tinkling the ivories to a room full of dead people and is promptly arrested! The real culprit is Hayes, who masquerades as kindly Matt the mute (!) and had the men killed as part of a land grab scheme.There isn't as much action in Randy Rides Alone as there is in some of the other John Wayne/ Lone Star productions, though there are a few good stunts courtesy of Yakima Canutt, the one where he leaps forward off a rolling horse being a particular standout.What really makes this good is the irresistible chance to see one of the few performances in which the clean shaven George Hayes plays a black-hatted heavy.Waynes quip, "That's the end of Matt the mute.", is priceless!

weezeralfalfa This is one of the few Lone Star Wayne westerns in which George(later "Gabby") Hayes was the chief villain rather than working with Wayne in bringing the baddies to justice. As in the other film in this series I have seen where Hayes was the chief villain, he is barely recognizable as the same person who played an oldtimer during this period as well as later. After he left Lone Star, he would(to my knowledge) be seen exclusively in his oldtimer role. As the villain, he was usually clean- shaven and lacked his distinctive oldtimer toothless manner of speech and improvised vocabulary. In the present film, he is seen in two incarnations: Matt the Mute, a bespectacled hunchbacked old man about town with a generous mustache, looking rather like TR, who can hear but not talk, and clean-shaven 20-20 visioned Marvin Black, a notorious outlaw leader who lives in a hideout behind a waterfall, some miles out of town. Black usually lives up to his name, dressed in all black, including his hat, in contrast to the rest of his gang and to Matt the Mute. As Matt, he often learns information relevant to his outlaw schemes.Wayne rides into town as a government special investigator, with the goal of infiltrating the Black gang. No one knows of his real status except for Sally, the niece of the recently murdered proprietor of the Half Way House. Black's present goal is to steal a large stash of cash believed somewhere in the Half Way House and to arm twist Sally, as the heir, into selling this establishment to him. Wayne is suspected by the town folk of the murder of Sally's uncle and others, although Sally knows this is false. She facilitates his escape from jail; however, he has a tough job not being gunned down by either the posse or the outlaws.Having seen quite a few of Wayne's Lone Star "B" westerns, I would rate this as one of the better ones, in terms of plot, although it lacked the comic element sometimes present. The beginning and end were particularly memorable. Newcomer Wayne walks into a watering hole in the middle of nowhere to find everyone dead, the player piano still making music and a pair of eyes moving behind a portrait with the eyes cut out. However, the ending would have been much more effective if the audience didn't know beforehand that Wayne had replaced the contested Half Way House money with dynamite.(Today, we would probably categorize Wayne as a bomb-rigging terrorist). Also, Sally seems unusually calm in seeing her Half Way House blown to smithereens, possibly including her fortune in cash. I've noticed that, whereas the male actors are mostly the same in this series of westerns, the female lead usually changes each time, giving Wayne quite a collection of film wives. Most of them are portrayed as basically helpless damsels in distress in the setting of the Wild West, and many look like they could have just stepped out of the Zeigfield Follies.