The Arizona Terror (1931)
Captain Porter's scheme is to buy livestock and then have his men show up later to kill the buyer and retrieve the money. When his men kill the next victim, he frames the Arizonian for the murder. The Arizonian escapes the law and joins up with the outlaw Vasquez. Knowing Porter's scheme, he plans to trap him by using Vasquez as the next buyer.
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Good start, but then it gets ruined
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Despite a somewhat tame climax, there's an unusual amount of action in this Ken Maynard "B" feature. True, there's a fair amount of talk too, plus an atrociously over-acted portrayal by Michael Visaroff who really enjoys hamming it up no end as a Mexican bandit. His death scene is intentionally ludicrous. Adding to the intentional fun are purposeful slips by the players which have been left in the film because it was simply too expensive and time-wasting to retake them. At first, the slips probably occurred unintentionally, but when producer and director made no attempts to retake these slips, it's obvious that the players had a bit of fun on purpose. Visaroff's bandit is often referred to as "Emilio Basquette". And Visaroff actually introduces his "daughter" with the line, "Her name is Chapman, but we call her Jane for short!"Fun aside, this was Rosen's third film with Ken Maynard and, despite its breakneck shooting pace, the movie is a testament to the director's verve and skill. The pace is so lively in fact, that few customers will notice the total absence of a music track – except under the opening and end titles.Both hero Maynard and villain Atchley wear black hats in this one – thus giving the lie to the legendary lore that you can always recognize the villain by his black hat! Another piece of old Hollywood lore also gets a thrashing in this oater, namely that it was too expensive for "B" units to shoot at night. In fact, the many night scenes in this movie are dramatically very effective.