Wayne Takes on the Lawless
Mexican bandit Zanti (Earl Dwire) is wanted for cattle rustling and murder and he is also wanted by John Tobin (John Wayne) who on returning to the parent's ranch sees that Zanti has been there. Tobin ends up joining forces with fellow rancher Dusty (George 'Gabby' Hayes) who has an attractive daughter called Ruby (Sheila Terry) who Zanti also fancies. Despite catching Zanti once the crafty Mexican escapes from the Sheriff's (Jack Rockwell) handcuffs forcing Tobin to give chase once again.
I am a fan of John Wayne movies and "The Lawless Frontier" is most definitely a western for fans of Wayne rather than for anyone else. I say this because "The Lawless Frontier" is another one of those movies which Wayne made for Lone Star productions early on in his career and if you have never watched one of these they were cheaply made westerns which often featured the same actors, same sorts of storylines and each ran for around an hour. As such there is absolutely nothing original about this movie as we have John Wayne playing a good guy going after a bad Mexican and would you know it come the end of the movie he's not only go the man but also the girl as well.
So is there anything of interest in this old western you might ask? Well there is George 'Gabby' Hayes who was a regular in these movies but it is a Hayes before he ended up playing Gabby in every movie and in fact this is one movie where he plays things pretty straight. There is also legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt who like Hayes appeared in a lot of these Lone Star movies and once again delights with an array of horse stunts, the sort of horse action which included jumping on to them as well as daring leaps from cliffs. And there is also the fact that like other Lone Star productions "The Lawless Frontier" never had its copyright renewed so now can be found to watch online legally although it also has to be said that unlike some of these westerns the image quality is not so good. Plus there is a young John Wayne but there is nothing of interest about Wayne's performance and is just a typical one from this era.
What this all boils down to is that "The Lawless Frontier" is not very good and most certainly not a movie for the casual fan of westerns or John Wayne.
