What a waste of my time!!!

That was an excellent one.

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

not a bad little western.. once again the "Duke" is teamed up with George Gabby Hayes.. this time,, the good people are being harassed by a villain who is sucking the town dry.. literally,, he built a dam to hog up all the water in town,, so it's either pay up to the man,, to get the water , or you ain't getting any water,,, a man and his daughter however have the only other water in town,, course they were smart enough to dig a well, therefore don't need mr. businessman's precious water,, when he finds out about this he tries to go and root them out of their land and get their water as well.. the local townspeople decide they have had enough and write the federal government,, and the town get's the "Duke" just in time so save the day.

John Wayne in one of his early singing (well dubbed) cowboy flicks stars as a government agent under cover trying to get to the bottom of a water scam that has a bad guy controlling the water in an area refusing to let anyone have water unless they pay him sky high fees. Wayne comes into the mix by helping a girl who robs a stage coach in order to get back the money taken from her father. It's a rambling mess where 20 minutes pass with a minimal amount of plot transpiring while the two stage coach drivers wander about being silly in an attempt to capture the robber. The film then kind of settles down at that pint, with Wayne romancing the girl and taking on the bad guys. Its twenty minutes of plot stretched to 55 minutes and for me its intolerable. Things just ramble onward in such away that you can't believe its taking as long as it is. I wanted to scream. Actually I reached for the remote and began scanning through the romance and horse riding bits. Sure Wayne is clearly a star but the film he's in is a crashing bore. I'd avoid it unless you like this sort of thing.

If you are a fan of early Duke movies, this Lone Star oldie is a good one. What more could you ask for than Duke, Yak, and Gabby. Lots of good ridin' and shootin'!!! I found it amazing that Duke's singing voice was Bill Bradbury, who is none other than Bob Steele's twin brother. It has been reported that Bob Steele was a high school classmate and friend of Duke, so twin brother Bill may have been too. Anyway, if you like good, clean, early western movies don't miss this one. We don't have to wonder about hidden meanings or try to figure out underlying themes. Just sit back, relax and enjoy a western movie from a simpler day and time. It's called entertainment folks!!!

I recently purchased this film on a special triple bill DVD from an overly cheap discount store, in fact it was so cheap that the three movie disc cost me just one single pound of my hard earned British currency.This film was both fantastic and atrocious in one. An exciting plot, but with laughable performances from the entire cast.We know that all great actors have to start somewhere and the lone star westerns of the early thirties were what John 'The Duke' Wayne cut his teeth on.To look at his work in his final film The Shootist in 1976, you can see just how much he had learnt over his 40 years in the business and what a great actor he did eventually become, but to look at his performances in these early days, you can understand why he spent most of the 1930's in relative obscurity.Although Wayne looks uncomfortable throughout most of these films and his acting is wooden to say the least, it can't all be blamed on him.These movies were the product of their day and cannot be judged by todays standards. Intended only as supporting features, these long forgotten studios turned out these 'B' movies by the shed load. Badly formed scripts with badly shaped characters must have poured though these fledgling studios like water through a hoop and with a stock company of actors who's style was still formed in the pantomime silent era, they were bound to be a bit cheesy. In fact if in 1933 there were Oscars awarded for the greatest achievement in over acting then this would be the motion picture with greatest ever hoard.Wayne's character is a notorious gunman with a name that must have put the fear of God into whoever crossed his path, Singing Sandy Saunders. Laugh? I damn near wet my pants.And if that wasn't enough to give me the biggest gut wrencher of the century, then George 'Gabby' Hayes certainly iced the cake.After an appalling song that sounded like two cats fighting over a piece of fish in a metal barrel, the great Gabby uttered the line, "Mmmm. I could listen to that all night." The line itself is worthy of side stitching surgery, but the look of peace and serenity on his face was just too much for the old chuckle muscles which then went on to explode.I can honestly say that a truly inspired and well written comedy has never made me laugh as much as this film did.However the story is a good one, with the corrupt businessman holding the town's ranchers to ransom over his monopoly in the water market with a view of buying up all the farms etc.It survives today as nothing more than a nostalgic glimpse into the past, not only at a bygone era in cinema making, but as a chance to see a real Hollywood legend finding his feet. This alone makes it worth every penny of the thirty-three pence I in effect paid for it.