Westward Ho (1935)
Ballard's trail jumpers attack the Wyatt Company wagon train, killing young John's parents and kidnaping his brother, Jim. In post-Civil War California, John Wyatt, now a man, pulls together a vigilante posse, The Singing Riders, who all ride white horses, dress alike, and ride the trails singing and rounding up outlaw gangs. Meanwhile, John is ever on the lookout for the gang that murdered his parents As a youngster John Wyatt saw his parents killed and his brother kidnapped. On a wagon train heading West he meets his brother who is now a spy for the gang which originally did the dirty work. He and his brother both fall for Mary Gordon When Ballard and his men attack the Wyatt wagon train, they kill all except two young brothers. Twelve years later one brother John has organized a vigilante group. The other brother Jim is now part of Ballard's gang and the two are destined to meet again
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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
the audience applauded
Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
SYNOPSIS: Loner organizes a vigilante group to hunt for his younger brother who was kidnapped by outlaws twelve years previously. NOTES: Dedicated to the Vigilantes... builders of the New Empire of the West... stern frontiersmen of the days of '49. Men who gave their lives to purge the new frontier of lawlessness. Republic's first film. Negative cost: a mere $37,000. However, that is largesse indeed compared to the sixteen Lone Star westerns, which were brought in at no more than $11,000 a-piece. More than three times the Lone Star budget here, and all that extra money is right up there on the screen.COMMENT: Despite some oddities (Wayne serenading the heroine with a dubbed basso profundo) and technical shortcomings (jerky continuity, tacky indoor sets, primitive sound recording), this is not only one of the best of Wayne's pre-superstar westerns, but a worthwhile addition to any permanent collection in its own right. The locations are truly breathtaking. Bradbury is a director (and Stout a photographer) who knows how to get both the dramatic and pictorial best out of them. The movie is full of sweeping images (the outlaw band, lined up across the frame, silhouetted vividly against sky and sand; the black-shirted singing riders, all mounted on white horses, encircling the renegades on a boulder-strewn mountainside) and no expense has been spared in staging the many action highlights, with lots of thrilling stuntwork, falls and running inserts. This is not a movie that saves all its action for the final reel either. In fact, if one has any complaint against the film, it's so full of action, there's little chance for the heroine. Never mind, Wayne acquits himself nobly, and there's an excellent performance from Frank McGlynn Jr as the outlaw brother. The villains, led by Curtis and Canutt are appropriately nasty. One critic has complained recently that the action scenes are undermined by the lack of background music. I didn't find this a problem. There is music in the film - under montages - plus no less than three songs (including the title number which is rendered no less than three times).By the humble standards of the "B" western, production values are outstanding.
first, we got people singing a song like watching a play on a stage. then the funny things showed up one by one. by watching this 1935 film i was unable not to think about what the hongkong shaw brothers did to their Chinese kung-fu movies, always with stupid screenplays, weird attires, costumes, hairdos, make-up, terrible acting... pretentious and unrealistic dialog.....all of those horrible arrangements shown in shaw brothers kung fu movies were accidentally matched this pathetic western genre b movie. all the people in this pioneering westward movie wore nice, clean and ironed costumes, even in gunfights, good guys led by john wayne were riding on white horses, wearing white shirts, while the bad guys' horses were just a mixture of different colors. there were so many laughable and pretentious scenes and dialog in this horrible film.
Brother versus brother as the Duke leads a gang of white-horse-mounted vigilantes out to destroy every bad guy in the state. His parents murdered by a gang of cattle thieves, his brother taken and raised by the gang, John/the Duke sets out to locate the gang a decade after the event. Exciting action scenes which make up for stilted dialogue, especially from Mary MacLaren as John's Ma. As the row of good guys, black hats and black shirts on their white chargers, thunder across the screen, my thoughts hark back to the days of 17-inch black and white TV sets. In Australia this comes packaged on a cheap DVD with 'Flying Tigers' and 'Hell Town'. The DVD has excellent sound but generally below average picture quality!
Newborn Republic Pictures utilizes the solid directoral ability of Robert Bradbury, and the presence of John Wayne along with Yakima Canutt and his troupe of stuntriders to produce this strongly scripted film of 1860s vigilante efforts to rid the Far West of outlaw bands that were involved in widespread robbery and cattle rustling. Bradbury, whose skill with Westerns dates back to the early silent period, directs and edits with a solid awareness of suspense, building his typically short scenes with sparse and, at times, stilted dialogue and an eye for proper cast placement which makes excellent use of defined personalities such as Wayne, Frank McGlynn Jr., and Glenn Strange, and gives particular value to the hard-riding stunt performers, who are splendid throughout this well-made (and musical) adventure filmed in California's Owens Valley, at the base of the Sierra Nevada.