Truly Dreadful Film

People are voting emotionally.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

. . . is the over-riding lesson of THE LUCKY TEXAN. When they have their Druthers, they'll rustle your cattle, swindle you out of your ranch, and swipe your gold mine, too, TEXAN teaches us. If these Fat Cat Robbers slip up enough so that there's a whiff of Crime in the air, they'll finger any surviving VICTIMS for these peccadilloes, with their legal lapdog sheriffs and judges only too eager to make such Trumped-up charges stick. All of the above takes place in TEXAN, as whistle-blower John Wayne yet again unmasks "The Men Behind the Curtain" (before he himself fell prey to Bad Influences, such as the infamous Yellow-Striper Ford, who back-shot Jesse James--or was it Dalton Trumbo?--when JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN). Good may appear victorious over Evil as TEXAN concludes, since it predates--by decades--Wayne's Evil Triumphant Trilogy (THE ALAMO, RIO BRAVO, and CHISUM), all of which feature a lawless Wayne killing good guys by the dozens. Too bad TEXAN writer\director Robert N. Bradbury did not put out ALL John Wayne movies.

John Wayne and Gabby Hayes strike it rich with a gold mine. Inevitably some villains want to take it from them. This is one of the most interesting of the many B westerns Duke made in the '30s. For one thing, there are surprisingly few gunshots fired in this one. Everyone seems to settle their problems by fisticuffs or by chasing one another. There's a lot of chasing in this one. This leads to some good Yakima Canutt stunts, though. Also, I'm not sure what era this was supposed to take place in. Lone Star wasn't known for caring about historical accuracy in these cheap B westerns. There were usually shots of telephone poles and the like in the background. In this one we not only have the usual background stuff but we have a Keystone Kops-style climax that features Gabby Hayes driving a car after the bad guys! This western, like the other B's made in the '30s, will seem pretty much like kids stuff today. But there is some fun to be had with it.

I've seen quite a few of John Wayne's B-movies that he made throughout the 1930s and this one certainly was unique. I saw it on the Encore Channel and noticed that the soundtrack was very, very modern--done with electrical instruments that hadn't been invented until very recently. Also, at times it really sounds out of place. However, the voice tracks are all original. Why was this done? Could anyone explain this to me?! It detracted a bit from an otherwise excellent B-western and I then noticed this in OTHER Wayne films on Encore. Whose hair-brained idea was this?!"The Lucky Texan" stars John Wayne with George "Gabby" Hayes. You might not recognize Gabby at first. Some of this is because in the 1930s he still hadn't settled upon his old coot character yet--appearing in some of Wayne's films with his false teeth and dressed quite well. In this guise, he occasionally even played the villain. Here, he isn't quite the erudite character but not quite the coot, either--he's a bit of a transition. While missing the teeth and sounding like the old Gabby we all know and love, here he sports a mustache instead of a scraggly beard and is a bit less of a crazy character--at least for the first 3/4 of the film.The movie begins with Wayne and his new partner discovering gold. However, instead of staking their claim and having it jumped, they decide to keep the location of their find a secret. Little do they know that the man in the gold assayer's office is part of a gang that includes many of the folks in town and they'll stop at nothing to steal the claim. First they try to frame Hayes for murder--and this fails. Then, he try to kill him and assume he's dead---though he survived and kept his whereabouts hidden. When men now claim that Hayes sold his property to them, Wayne is sure that there is a conspiracy afoot...and he investigates while Hays lies low. How Hayes manages to do this is a real hoot--but I won't say more--it would spoil the fun.While the plot is pretty standard, how all this is handled is certainly not. Again, I can't really say more, as it would really miss a wonderful twist. Leave it to me when I just say that you MUST see this film if you like B-westerns. You'll see what I mean.By the way, aside from the bad soundtrack that was tacked on later, isn't it odd to see ladies wearing 1930s-style dresses and seeing one of the good guys give chase in a model T Ford as two of the baddies rode off on an electric cart?! Apart from these anachronisms (and more), this looks like an old West film and it sure baffled me!

John Wayne and blacksmith George "Gabby" Hayes strike gold in a nearby creek, prompting crooked gold office employees into tricking Gabby into signing his property over to them in an attempt to get closer to the gold. Complicating things is the no good son of the town's sheriff who frames poor Gabby for attempted murder.Another good film from the Duke's tenure as a Lone Star/Monogram contract star, this is fast-paced, well edited and a heckuva lot of fun.As well as playing the chief heavy, Yakima Cannut appears to have performed every stunt in the movie himself. For example, in the scene where Wayne confronts the sheriff's son, the escaping villain turns into an easily recognizable Cannut who does a flying leap onto his horse. Wayne runs after him and also turns into Cannut. He then leaps onto White Flash and begins chasing himself!A great climax begins with scene-stealer Gabby in a dress. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought he really was an old woman!